Breaking The Gods
by Asilda
Summary: Alliance AU. Nico infiltrates a boarding school that's been conducting experiments on demigods, and discovers a plot far more twisted than anything he ever expected. Cut off from Percy and Camp Halfblood, as well as Anubis and the Kanes as they struggle in their fight against Apophis, Nico must turn to a new ally, the Roman demigod Jason Grace, if he has any hope of surviving.
1. Chapter 1

AN: OK, so first off, sorry for not writing anything sooner. I finished reading _The Serpent's Shadow_, and then I didn't really know what to do, because of some of the stuff that happened in it, which I won't say here because I don't want to give any spoilers for the last book. But I will say that a number of my plans for this AU got overturned, so I've been trying to decide whether to keep this AU aligned with the Kane Chronicles books and scrap my plans, or to break away from the canon universe, like I did after the Heroes of Olympus series started to be released. In the end, I decided that I want to keep this AU's continuity aligned with the continuity of the real Kane Chronicles, so I've been going over all of my plans from before reading Serpent's Shadow, cutting out what doesn't fit, and figuring out how to fix it so that it does. And in the course of that, I came up with some things that I liked better than my original plans. And hopefully you guys will like it too. More info about this fic can be read on my profile (for as long as this fic continues to be marked In Progress) so I can cut down the length of the AN.

I'll do my best to update this fic as fast I can, but fair warning, there's likely to be a week or two between new chapters this summer.

Now, onto the story!

* * *

Preface

_ Jason forced his hands to remain steady as he pressed two fingers against Nico's throat, checking for a pulse. It was hard to quiet the thundering of his own heartbeat that was pounding away at his temples, to make sure he didn't mistake his own pulse for Nico's. But Nico was frighteningly cold to the touch, and Jason couldn't feel his heartbeat. _

_ Not completely trusting his own evaluation, he grabbed Nico's wrist and tried to find a pulse there, but again, there was nothing._

_ "No, no, no," he growled, and grabbed the front of Nico's shirt. He tore it open, to make it easier to give the younger boy chest compressions, but as he reached to position his hands directly over Nico's heart, he froze. Because embedded in Nico's chest, right overtop of his heart, was a black stone scarab, and Jason could clearly see that it wasn't just stuck to his skin. The thing was actually a part of him. A very thin, translucent layer of skin had actually grown over the edges of it, and a spider web of black veins radiated outward around it. "What the . . ."_

_ Jason wasn't sure what to do. He'd been planning on trying to restart Nico's heart, but now he wasn't sure if Nico even had one. Or if the scarab thing was some sort of magical replacement for it. Or if he ever even had a pulse to begin with. All Jason knew was that he didn't want to lose anyone else on this assignment, even if Nico hadn't officially been working for him._

_ He tried to steel himself and focus and think like a commander, and a warrior. This wasn't the first time he'd knelt over a dying or dead friend, and fate wasn't kind enough for him to think it would be the last time either, but it never, ever got any easier._

_ "Nico?" he asked, because the stone scarab in place of his heart meant that the usual rules for having a pulse might not apply. "Can you hear me? Nico?"_

_ Nico gave no indication that he'd heard Jason, or that he was conscious._

_ "I was going to give you CPR, but I'm not sure if it will work, considering you might have a stone heart," said Jason. "I'm going to try anyway, because I don't know what else to do. If this is the wrong thing, I'm sorry. And if this doesn't work . . . I'm sorry."_

_ He could almost see Nico scowling at him, reminding him that he was doing what he wanted to do, and not doing any favors for Jason, except maybe telling him what he learned inside the complex, but that didn't make Jason feel like it was any less his fault. He should have tried harder to keep tabs on the kid. But it was too late now, and stewing over it wasn't going to help him._

_ Jason positioned his hands over the stone scarab, and prepared to start chest compressions, but the sound of rushed footsteps reached his ears. He tensed and was about to reach for his sword, but another teen was already rushing into the room. Another demigod, Jason realized with relief, and one who wasn't one of the poor, broken half-bloods that the complex had been torturing. That much was apparent at just a glance. _

_ This new demigod wore a few pieces of old fashioned armor over an orange T-shirt, and carried a bronze sword, that he clearly knew how to use. His wrists were thick with muscle and he had the graceful, balanced step that only a trained warrior could manage. Several pieces of tousled dark hair fell into, but did nothing to obscure a pair of furious sea green eyes that zeroed in on Jason with deadly intent. _

_ "Get away from my cousin!"_

* * *

1

Three Weeks Earlier

"No, no, no!" The shout echoed through all of Brooklyn House.

It was Saturday morning, but late in the morning, so most of the magicians in training were awake. Kids and teens lounged around, on the sofa, in the library, in whatever favorite nooks and acloves they'd claimed since beginning their magical education, eating cereal, or eggs, or oatmeal, reading, watching cartoons, practicing magic, or playing a little basketball . . . or in the case of one young penguin-loving magician, and one possessed demigod, playing Mythomagic.

"You're cheating!" shouted Felix. "You have to be cheating! There is no way you could have beaten me fifteen times in a row!"

"There's this thing called 'skill,'" Nico told him calmly. "You're lacking in it."

"I have skill!" said Felix. "And I put together this deck specifically to kill your death god deck. There is no way it could have lost fifteen times in a row!"

"You lost because you slapped together a deck full of any god or creatures with undead resistance or undead killer stats on them, regardless of what kind of energy cards you needed to power them with," Nico tried to explain to the younger boy. "If you don't have the right energy cards to attack me, then your undead killer means nothing."

"But I've still got the undead resistance! That halves your attacks," protested Felix. "You shouldn't be able to win against that!"

"Except my deck is full of dark energy cards, so I'm constantly drawing them, and using them, and constantly attacking. Even with my attacks halved it's still more effective than not being able to attack because I can never draw the right kind of energy for my gods." Nico wished that Felix would get a better grasp of strategy, so that beating him might actually become a bit of a challenge, but good Mythomagic partners were hard to find.

Felix made glared and looked like he wanted to say something against that reasoning, but couldn't think of any counterpoints.

"I could help you put together a sound deck, if you want," offered Nico. "You've got plenty of good cards, and if you put them together right, you could give me a run for my money."

"How do I know you wouldn't just sabotage my deck so you could win even more?" asked Felix.

Nico smirked. "Do you really think I need to?"

Felix pouted and began gathering up his cards. Nico started gathering his own and packing them away.

"Why don't you let me put together a deck for you, then let's go to the card shop this afternoon and see if there's anyone up for a game?" suggested Nico. "You can test it out there."

"You'll take me?" asked Felix, his eyes lighting up.

"Sure. It'll be fun," said Nico.

"Okay, then!" Felix pushed his deck across the table to Nico, then bent down and picked up his box of spare cards off the floor. Then he watched as Nico began pouring over them, planning out a new strategy for him.

"What's going on in here?" asked Sadie, striding into the room where they were playing. "Nico beat you again, Felix?"

"Yes, but now he's helping me come up with a better deck, which I'm going to take and shove down his throat, so nyah." Felix stuck out his tongue at both of them.

"The deck's only half the battle," Nico warned him. "It takes more than a fast car to win a race."

"You better not sabotage my deck then use that as an excuse for why I don't win," said Felix.

"I wouldn't do that," said Nico. "I don't need to."

Felix stuck his tongue out at Nico again then hopped off his chair. "I'm hungry? Is it lunch yet?"

"Still a little early for lunch," Sadie told him.

"I'm going to get more breakfast then. Be right back!" With those parting words, Felix barreled out of the room.

"I'm surprised you put up with him," said Sadie after he was gone.

"Why? Because I'm an evil death god's son with another death god stuck in my head?" asked Nico.

"No. Just because he's so . . ." Sadie waved her hand wildly, which was actually a pretty good indication of Felix's attitude and mental state. "And you're borderline cold, and not all that patient."

Nico shrugged, not denying the accusations. They were true, of course, even if the circumstances that had shaped him into the person he currently was weren't fair by any stretch of the imagination. "I don't dislike Felix. He can be annoying, but . . . well, you probably won't believe this, but I used to be a lot like him."

"You're right," said Sadie. "I don't believe that. Not one bit."

The corner of Nico's mouth quirked to the side in a kind-of smile. "Ask Percy how badly he wanted to choke me when we first met, next time you see him. He'll tell you how bad I was."

He meant to sound light hearted, but he couldn't help but let a bitter note slip into his tone. Sadie picked up on it and sat down in an empty chair beside him. "You need to talk? I'm not a great listener or anything, but . . ."

Nico shrugged. "And I'm not a great talker. But I appreciate the offer, Sadie."

Sadie nodded. She might have said something else, but Nico was distracted by the feeling of Anubis's consciousness growing more alert inside his head. It was either Nico's melancholy thoughts, Sadie's presence, or a combination of the two that had prompted the god, whose soul was fused to his, to start paying more attention to their conversation, but Nico didn't particularly want him around at that moment.

_Everything alright?_ inquired Anubis inside Nico's mind.

_Yeah. Everything's fine. _

_ Liar._

Nico forced himself not to scowl, because he knew Sadie would interpret it as meant for her. _Everything _is_ fine. I'm not lying._

_ You're upset about something, but even looking through your thoughts I can't tell what,_ said Anubis.

This time Nico did scowl, but directed it at the cards on the table rather than toward Sadie. _I'm not upset. I was just a bit nostalgic. Or at least I would be if I thought it was a good thing that I used to act like Felix. But I don't think that. I don't miss being that ignorant one bit. And I was never as bad at Mythomagic as he is._

_If you say so._

_ I wasn't!_

"Nico?" asked Sadie. "Earth to Nico?"

"Sorry, what?" asked Nico.

"I asked if I heard right that you were taking Felix to the card shop this afternoon?" repeated Sadie.

"Oh, yeah. After lunch," said Nico. "That's okay, right?"

"Fine by me. It's Saturday, so no school," said Sadie. "Are you going to be sticking around for awhile this time?"

Nico shrugged. "For the weekend, at least. Things are going relatively smooth at Camp Half-Blood, so they shouldn't need me for anything. And you guys need all the help you can get, so I'm here."

"We appreciate it," said Sadie. Then she gave him a special smile that Nico wasn't entirely sure was meant for him.

_Shut up,_ Anubis told him.

_What? I didn't say anything._

_ You were thinking it._

_ I'm allowed to think what I want! It's my head._ To Sadie, he said, "I don't want to get sidelined for anymore big fights. Not like last time, when I got stuck in the Duat while you guys were running around the world, getting attacked by every chaos creature under the sun and everything that resembled a snake under the moon. Next time you guys face the big snake and his minions, I'm going to be there."

"And we're going to be glad to have you," returned Sadie.

Nico was one of the few who knew the contingency plan that Sadie and Carter had been working on. And he knew it because they trusted him enough to tell him. As far as he knew, the only other person they'd told about it was Walt, because they'd needed his help for it. Even if they hadn't told Nico, he would have found out anyway, because Anubis and Walt were talking quite a bit these days. Nico felt guilty, not telling Sadie and Carter when he knew that the subject of their conversations was something that Sadie at least had a right to know, but it really wasn't his place. He hoped that one or both of them would have a talk with Sadie and let her into the loop soon, or when she did find out, she was going to blow up on all three of them. And Nico knew they'd all deserve it. Sadie and Carter kept no secrets from him, so in return he tried not to keep any from them. The only reason he was making an exception now was because with Walt's condition, it might very well be his dying wish. Nico had accepted that no matter what way the dice fell, he was going to feel guilty, so he'd been doing his best to make up for it by being as useful as he could for Sadie and Carter. His shadow traveling powers, and his ability to all but disappear in the smallest patch of shadows made him very useful as a spy, so for the past few weeks, he'd been doing his best to track their enemies' movements.

"Do you want to come to the card shop with us?" Nico asked, because he didn't want this conversation to devolve into anything too emotional, or too serious, and so he said the first thing that came into his mind. "Probably not, since you don't play Mythomagic, but they sell other stuff there too. Comics, role-playing game guides, board games, miniatures . . . well, nothing you're interested in, but –"

"Sure."

"What?" Nico couldn't quite believe what he'd just heard.

"Sure, I'll go with you," said Sadie. "I feel like getting out of the house."

"Oh. Okay. Cool."

"Plus, someone has to protect you boys when you inevitably get attacked by either magicians or monsters," added Sadie.

"It's just a trip to the card shop . . . or at least it was," growled Nico. "Now you've jinxed it."

Sadie shrugged. "Sorry, mate. I hate to break it to you, but that's your own bad luck there, and it's got nothing to do with me, or with jinxes."

Nico snorted. "I've never been attacked on a trip to a card store before. But because you said it, it's definitely going to happen now. So thanks for nothing."

Sadie laughed and patted him on the head as she walked out of the room. "Right. I'm just going to make sure my kit is stocked, so I have everything I need to save you."

Nico grumbled as he went back to making a new deck for Felix.

_You do know that jinxes are not real, do you not?_ asked Anubis.

_Oh, they're real alright, _said Nico.

_I assure you, they're not._

_ Tell me that after this card shop trip goes south._


	2. Chapter 2

2

The comic store trip turned out to actually be pretty fun, much to Sadie's surprise. She wasn't much into Mythomagic, or other card games, RPGs, or other stuff she considered geeky, but she had to admit there was something adorable about watching Nico/Anubis and Felix getting so excited about a simple game.

They might have taken it a bit too far though, by challenging this really big, foul tempered guy to a few matches, then beating him every single time. And rubbing it in his face, how he'd been beaten by kids who were only about a third of his age. Taunting him and teasing him until the guy looked ready to flip the table over on top of them.

"Boys, I think that's enough," she said hastily, trying not to stare at the peculiar shade of red that the man's face had turned as Nico and Felix gave each other some sort of complicated high-five hand-shake thing that ended in a bro fist.

"You're right," said Nico, smirking deviously.

"We are getting kind of bored just beating the same loser over and over again," said Felix.

Sadie fought down the urge to shake her head at them. If they were anyone else, she'd probably be worried, but Felix was extremely fast when he wanted to be, and Nico was probably the most dangerous person she knew. If the old, red-faced uber-geek decided to start something with them, she was sure Nico would finish it for him.

"Come on, boys," said Sadie, grabbing both of them by one arm and pulling them away from the tables that seemed to have been set up just so people could play games at them. Sadie found the whole concept interesting, having never thought about it much before. It was almost like the game store was as much a meeting place for gamers as it was a business to sell them stuff.

She released Nico when he pulled away from her near a rack of comics, and drifted over to look through them. Then she released Felix when he pulled away too, and ran after Nico, trailing him like a baby duckling.

"What're you reading, Nico? Is it any good? Does it have any penguins in it?"

The look on Nico's face was priceless as he raised one eyebrow, then gave Sadie an accusing look, like it was her fault Felix had started tailing him.

"Wonder Woman? But isn't that for girls? What would you want to read about her for?" demanded Felix, reading the title of the comic Nico was holding.

"It's not just for girls," Nico said defensively. "And Wonder Woman's a daughter of Zeus. And she reminds me of one of my cousins, who's also a daughter of Zeus."

"Oh, that's cool I guess. Hey, do you –"

"Here. Look at this." Nico handed another comic over to Felix, who immediately snatched it and started leafing through it.

"Whoa, this looks cool."

"So you're into comics too, huh?" asked Sadie.

Nico shrugged. "Not hardcore. I just read them from time to time. Some of them are interesting."

"Well what about all this other stuff I see around here?" asked Sadie.

Nico shook his head. "A lot of this stuff takes a long time to learn and get into, and I'm kind of short on time these days, what with the world being about to end fifty different ways and all. Maybe after we avert all these apocalypses I'll take up another game."

"We should try Dungeons and Dragons!" said Felix.

Nico raised an eyebrow at him again. "What do you mean _we?_"

"Well, you need a group of people to play, yeah?" said Felix. "And getting lots of people together isn't really easy. But since we both live in Brooklyn House, we've both got one person we know we'll always be able to get ahold of."

"Well, as fun as I'm sure that will be for both of you," said Sadie, deliberately smirking at Nico, "I think it's probably about time to head back. We've been here for hours."

"What?"

"No we haven't."

Both Nico and Felix protested this, but then Nico took out an old fashioned pocket watch and checked the time.

"Oh. I guess we have," he said. "Yeah, maybe we should head back. Sorry Sadie, you must have been bored out of your mind."

"No, not really," said Sadie. "Watching you guys make that big guy's face turn red was pretty amusing."

"I want to go check the preview display for the new booster packs once more," said Felix, and he darted off before Sadie or Nico could stop him.

"I've got to say," Sadie told Nico as they walked to catch up with Felix. "You make a good baby sitter."

She meant it to annoy him, and to try to get a rise out of him, but Nico actually just nodded and stayed annoyingly calm. "I've been trying to act more grown up, lately. To take things more seriously and be more responsible."

_Whoa, where'd this come from?_ Sadie wondered, looking at Nico in concern. "You serious?" she asked out loud.

Nico nodded. "Yeah."

"Well that's just . . . wow."

Nico scowled at her. "What? I wasn't that out of control and irresponsible before, was I?"

"No, I'm just wondering what brought this on," said Sadie. She would have liked to have teased Nico about this newfound desire to be responsible, but had the feeling that it would be inappropriate to do so, and it would probably cut him deeper than she meant to, and she wasn't completely heartless after all.

"Just . . . everything, I guess," said Nico.

"Could you be a little more specific?"

"Everything that's been happening," said Nico. "From even before I met you and Carter. Everything that happened in the Titan War, and now with your big chaos snake, as well as the Mad Oracle's prophecy. It just seems like I'm always ending up in the middle of everything, whether I mean to be, or want to be, or not. And it sucks, but I don't think it's going to stop any time soon. And since I'm going to end up being responsible for so much, I should try taking responsibility for it . . . if that makes any sense. Does it?"

"Kind of," said Sadie. "You're basically saying that you know that a lot of heavy burdens are going to fall to you, and you want to shoulder them the best that you can. So you're trying to be more grown up and responsible, right?"

"Yeah. That," agreed Nico.

"I can respect that," said Sadie. She actually thought it was extremely admirable, but it wasn't in her nature to gush or over compliment people, and she doubted Nico would have known how to handle that anyway.

"I'm just tired of always having to be rescued by Percy . . . and you guys, but mainly Percy. I want to be more like him. The kind of person who looks out for others and who people can depend on."

"Um . . . yeah. Because what you just said doesn't apply to you at all," commented Sadie, smacking Nico lightly in the back of the head.

"You know what I mean," said Nico. "I only spend half my time trying to do that, it seems like. The other half of my time is spent being a damsel in distress –"

"Through no fault of your own."

"Most of the time, yeah, but that doesn't change it," muttered Nico. "I just want to be stronger. I want to be able to stand on my own two feet."

"I hate to break it to you, Nico," said Sadie, "but in our line of work, and I'm talking about saving the world from mythological threats bringing about the apocalypse here, no one can stand on their own. We all need other people because, hello, these are gods and monsters we're dealing with. No one person can stand up to them on his or her own. Every single one of us needs friends to watch our backs."

"You sound like an _Avengers_ trailer," said Nico, but he looked a little less morose than he had just minutes ago, so Sadie took that as a victory.

"If only it were that easy," sighed Sadie. "They only had to save the world from aliens. Us? We get to deal with a magician civil war, chaos demons, Egyptian gods constantly trying to possess and take control of us, and oh yeah, Apophis, the mother of all snakes, trying to plunge the world into eternal chaos."

"Hey, can I ask you a question?" said a girl standing nearby with earrings made of many sided game dice and a Spider-Man tank top. "What game are you guys talking about?"

"What?" asked Sadie.

"The game you guys were talking about. With the magician civil war, chaos demons, and Egyptian gods. It sounds leet," the girl said to Sadie.

"It's just an RPG that we made up," said Nico, when Sadie would have just gaped at the girl.

The girl's gaze shifted to Nico and her eyes widened a little bit as she looked him up and down appreciatively. "Oh. Wow. Any way I could get in on that game?" she asked, though Sadie got the feeling that the game itself wasn't really what that girl wanted to get in on. Because that girl was definitely checking Nico out.

That realization made Sadie annoyed for reasons she couldn't quite explain.

"Sorry. The campaign's only about two sessions from being over," Nico lied smoothly to the girl. "I like your shirt, by the way."

"Oh. Thanks."

"Come on, we need to leave," said Sadie, seizing Nico's arm again and dragging him after Felix. "What was that?" she demanded once they were out of earshot. "You like her shirt?"

"What? What's your problem?" demanded Nico. "I'm allowed to like Spider-Man shirts!"

"Yeah, but you – oh, never mind." Sadie couldn't even explain what she had gotten annoyed about to herself, and didn't want to vent her frustration on Nico. "Let's just go."

"Spider-Man's philosophy kind of ties into what I was trying to say earlier," said Nico as he followed Sadie. Thankfully he didn't seem too upset with her for her outburst. "With great power comes great responsibility."

"Huh?"

"With great power comes great responsibility," repeated Nico. "If you think about it, it's actually really profound. Especially for people like us. And it sucks for him that he had to learn that the hard way."

"What are you even talking about?" asked Sadie.

Nico blinked at her. "Are you telling me you don't know Spider-Man's origin story?"

"I've never really paid attention to comics, Nico. They really don't interest me –"

"I was out of time for like seventy years and I still know Spider-Man's origin story!" said Nico, seeming almost annoyed now. "How can you not know it?"

"Because like I just said, I'm not interested in comics."

"Then don't think of it as a comic. Just think of it as a myth," said Nico. "Or a cautionary tale where one day a teenager, a kid just like us, suddenly got these amazing powers. And this kid, his home life wasn't bad, but it was far from perfect. His parents were gone, so he lived with his great uncle and great aunt, and they were like parents to him, so that's a hell of a lot better than lots of us have it. And one of the things his uncle used to always say to him before he got those powers was that with great power there must also come great responsibility. The kid, he didn't really get what his uncle was saying. So when he got those awesome powers, he didn't think much about responsibility. He used them carelessly, but then the chance to use them for something good presented itself. There was this robber, and Spider-Man could have stopped him. But he didn't. Even though he had the power to, he just stood by and let the guy get away. Then the robber went on to murder Spider-Man's uncle. The guy who was like a father to him. And Spider-Man could have stopped the guy. Can you even imagine what that must have felt like?"

Sadie stayed quiet, but shook her head. She hated to admit it, but the way Nico told it, made it seem like a pretty compelling story. And she couldn't imagine what it must feel like, to know that someone she cared about had gotten hurt when she could have prevented it. It hurt bad enough when people she cared about got hurt and she couldn't prevent it.

"So . . . yeah," said Nico. "Since then Spider-Man's taken his uncle's words to heart. He started trying to use his powers responsibly, and to save as many lives as he could. Not just to try to make up for the life that he couldn't save, but because he knows now, that's the right thing to do. The right way to use his powers."

"You're talking about Spider-Man?" Felix was back. Or actually, they'd caught up to him, where he was at the shop's front window, drooling over this big window decal advertising new booster packs for Mythomagic. Half a dozen gods with armor and weapons were striking heroic poses, hoisting their swords and spears, or summoning elements. Sadie scowled at the title of the new line of cards: Roman Fury. Her experience with Roman ghosts did not make her want to suddenly run out and buy their trading cards, but Nico and Felix both seemed to think they were awesome.

"Kind of," answered Nico. "Ready to go?"

Felix nodded, then hesitated. "Hey Nico?"

"Yeah?"

"Will you bring me back here when the Roman Fury packs are released? Please? I've been saving my money for them for months, but –"

"Sure."

"What? You will?" Felix perked up enthusiastically. "Thanks Nico! You're awesome!"

Then the kid darted up and hugged Nico quickly, before turning and dashing out the doors. That's right. The little penguin freak hugged the son of Hades. Sadie could hardly wrap her mind around that, except she knew she needed to, and quickly, or she'd lose the opportunity to tease Nico about it.

"Awww, how sweet," she crooned at Nico, who stood there still dumbfounded.

"Shut up."

"Sweet enough to rot your teeth out," said Sadie. "Though I must say, I'm surprised you didn't punch his teeth out."

"Shut up," Nico repeated gruffly, heading toward the doors. "Come on. Wasn't it you who wanted to get home?"

"I can walk and tease you at the same time," said Sadie, slinging an arm around Nico's shoulders. "So tell me, how long do you think it'll be before Felix starts calling you Big Brother Nico? Oh, and have you been taking big brothering lessons from Percy?"

"Percy's not my brother," growled Nico.

"Details, details. Hey do you – yah!" Sadie yelped as Nico suddenly shoved her backwards so hard that she fell on her rear. "Hey! What do you think you're –"

She broke off as she saw Nico sprint forward, faster than the speed of darkness, and tackle Felix, who stood directly in front of the game shop window, still drooling over the Roman Fury promo decal. Half a second later, the window exploded, struck by what looked like a blast of red energy that hit the window right where Felix had been standing. Glass rained down over the two boys, but Nico managed to shield Felix from the worst of it. He jumped up quickly though, before his cuts could really start bleeding, because they all knew what happened when his black blood touched anything . . . and what happened when it touched another living person.

" . . . doing," finished Sadie feeling stupid as she clambered back to her feet and reached into her Duat storage for her staff. "Alright, who did that?"

Nico hauled Felix off the ground and drug him back toward Sadie, before Felix had even seemed to comprehend what had happened. Then Nico pushed him back to where Sadie was standing and stood in front of both of them, placing himself directly between them and whatever had destroyed the window. The nerve of him! Like Sadie really needed his protection just because he was a man! Not even a man yet, just a kid, younger even than her.

"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded, storming up to stand beside him.

Nico glared at her sideways. "You need to stay away from me or my blood is going to rot your skin off, Sadie."

Now that Sadie had a closer look, she could see that he'd picked up a few cuts, but none of them looked too bad. None were gushing, which was a good sign, so Sadie decided to risk it.

"I'm not letting you face whatever this is on your own. What is it, by the way?" she asked, glaring at the source of their problems. At first glance it appeared to be kid like them. A boy, maybe about Nico's age, possibly a little younger. But Sadie was well aware how deceptive first glances could be, especially when supernatural forces came into play.

"I think . . . I think he's a demigod," said Nico, but he sounded very uncertain.

"Since when do demigods shoot red energy blasts?" asked Sadie.

"Yeah, that's Cyclops's power," piped up Felix.

"He didn't shoot red energy . . . he ripped a fire hydrant off the curb and threw that at Felix. Or at least I thought he was throwing it at Felix . . ."

As they watched, the demigod, assuming the kid was a demigod, jumped through the broken window and snatched up the Roman Fury window decal. It had survived the onslaught, even when the window hadn't, probably because it was a bendable piece of plastic or vinyl or whatever, and the window was a shatterable sheet of glass. But the demigod quickly began trying to fix this mistake, holding it in one hand and punching at it and clawing it with the other, like he was trying to kill it.

"Um . . . what is he doing?" asked Sadie.

"Hades if I know."

"I guess he's not a fan of the new booster packs," said Felix, trying to get closer.

Nico grabbed the younger boy's jacket and pulled him back. "Maybe it's the release date he's got a problem with. I really don't want to wait another month either."

"Ah. That must be it," decided Felix.

"Be serious, boys," said Sadie.

"Right. Serious." Nico's expression darkened as though on command. "He's definitely a demigod. He feels like one, and I'm not seeing anything through the Mist."

"Okay . . . so do you demigods hate the Roman forms of your pantheon or something?" asked Sadie.

"I've never heard of anything like that . . . wait . . ." Nico's eyes went slightly unfocused, like they often did when he was concentrating hard on what Anubis was telling him. "But that . . . that doesn't make sense . . . Okay, I just _remembered_ that there used to be demigods who were children of the Roman forms of our gods, and that us kids of their Greek forms used to be at war with them. But . . . I guess those guys aren't around anymore since I haven't heard anything recent about them . . ."

Sadie translated that to mean that Anubis had just told Nico about these Roman gods and demigods. It wasn't common knowledge that he was possessed by Anubis, and for his safety, they were keeping it that way. If it had been just her, Nico would have told her that Anubis had told him that, but in front of Felix, he had to stretch the truth a bit.

"Not necessarily," she said. "They might still be around. I mean, you guys hadn't heard of the House of Life before you met us."

Nico's eyes narrowed at her, and he shook his head warningly. And Sadie recognized a slight change in him and realized that it was Anubis shaking his head, giving her that warning. Why, she wasn't sure, but then Nico was himself again, looking confused.

"Maybe," said Nico, sounding suspicious, probably because of Anubis's takeover. "I can't _remember_ anything else right now. But there's a chance that this demigod might know something about them."

"So what do we do?" asked Felix.

"You don't do anything," said Nico. "I'm going to try talking to him. Both of you, stay back."

"We're not letting you do this alone," said Sadie.

"He's unarmed," pointed out Nico. "And the only thing he really wants to kill seems to be that window decal. I'm just going to try to talk to him, and see if I can figure out what's wrong with him. You guys are magicians, and lately we've been being taught that you guys can be dangerous. So you should probably stay back and not provoke him."

It sounded reasonable enough, but it still grated on Sadie's nerves, the idea of letting a friend so close to something dangerous when she couldn't be right beside them. But she nodded, deciding to trust Nico's judgment.

"Alright," said Sadie. "But be careful."

"I will," said Nico, then started toward the angry demigod. Then he stopped. "Oh, and Sadie?"

"Yes?"

"This is all your fault."

"What?" demanded Sadie. "How is this my fault?"

"You jinxed us."

* * *

AN: Thank you so much everyone who reviewed! It makes me really happy to see how many people who've read my past fics have come back to read this one. I love you guys!

Most of you seem to feel the same way I did about how The Serpent's Shadow ended. But I can't say much about it here, because I don't want to give spoilers for those who haven't read it. And most of the questions that were asked in reviews will be answered in the course of this story, so I won't answer them now because I don't want to give spoilers for my own fic, lol.

I'll update again as soon as I can, and try very hard to make this fic as good as everyone hopes it will be.


	3. Chapter 3

3

"Okay . . . so do you demigods hate the Roman forms of your pantheon or something?" asked Sadie.

"I've never heard of anything like that," Nico started to say, when Anubis spoke up.

_Nico . . . there is something that you do not know._

"Wait," Nico requested to Sadie and Felix. To Anubis he stated, _I'm listening._

_ There . . . your pantheon of gods . . . they have a Roman form. And at one time, their Roman forms were able to have children. And . . . the Roman demigods were once at war with the Greek demigods._

"But that . . . that doesn't make sense," said Nico accidentally speaking out loud. Then he caught himself. _Why would they do that? Why would we do that? I mean . . . they were our brothers and sisters, right?_

_ I cannot pretend to comprehend the minds of mortals, let alone Greek or Roman ones, Nico._

_ Why do I get the feeling you know more than you're telling me?_ asked Nico.

Damning silence was his only response.

"Okay, I just _remembered_ that there used to be demigods who were children of the Roman forms of our gods, and that us kids of their Greek forms used to be at war with them. But . . . I guess those guys aren't around anymore since I haven't heard anything recent about them . . ."

But even as he said that, he realized that might not be true. Sadie apparently came to the same conclusion.

"Not necessarily," she said. "They might still be around. I mean, you guys hadn't heard of the House of Life before you met us."

_You think that's what this is?_ Nico asked Anubis.

_I don't have any idea what this is. Even if he is a Roman, I don't know why he would be trying to kill a window cling with the Roman pantheon on it._

_Hey, stop that!_ shouted Nico, realizing that while he was distracted, Anubis had taken control of his body and was shaking his head at Sadie. He wrested control back and mentally glowered at Anubis. _When we get back, you're going to tell me everything you know about this, Anubis. _

_ There's not much to tell. I don't keep track of the affairs of demigods. Or at least I did not until I accidentally possessed you._

"Maybe," said Nico, suspiciously. That one word conveniently served as an adequate response to both Sadie's comment and Anubis's lie. "I can't _remember_ anything else right now. But there's a chance that this demigod might know something about them," he continued, addressing Sadie.

"So what do we do?" Felix wanted to know..

"You don't do anything. I'm going to try talking to him. Both of you, stay back."

Predictably, Sadie had protests. "We're not letting you do this alone," she said immediately.

"He's unarmed. And the only thing he really wants to kill seems to be that window decal. I'm just going to try to talk to him, and see if I can figure out what's wrong with him," said Nico. "You guys are magicians, and lately we've been being taught that you guys can be dangerous. So you should probably stay back and not provoke him."

He was expecting more of an argument from Sadie, but she surprised him.

"Alright," she said. "But be careful."

"I will," said Nico, then started toward the angry demigod. Then stopped as something occurred to him. "Oh, and Sadie?"

"Yes?"

"This is all your fault," he told her.

"What? How is this my fault?"

"You jinxed us," he told her. Then to Anubis said, _And see? I told you jinxes were real._

_Coincidence,_ said Anubis dismissively.

"Boy, it's your own bad luck that brought this down on us," argued Sadie.

"Keep telling yourselves that!" Nico turned and stalked toward the angry demigod, staying on full alert.

Truthfully, he was wary of anyone or anything that could pull a fire hydrant right out of the sidewalk. He would have preferred not to get too close, but that would meant Sadie or Felix would have to, and of the three of them, he was the best choice for approaching crazy berserker demigods. Aside from being a fellow demigods, as opposed to a magician who was more likely to be treated with suspicion, Nico was the best fighter out of the three of them. His demigod blood gave him a heightened sense of awareness in battle, better reflexes, stamina, and strength . . . even if his strength wasn't on level with this particular demigod's. If this angry Roman-hating demigod managed to hit or seriously hurt him, he had the best chance of surviving. Nectar and ambrosia worked wonders on him, but would burn Sadie and Felix alive. But Nico didn't anticipate being hit by this thug. He was fast. He sparred with Percy on a semi-regular basis. Even if he couldn't beat his cousin yet, he could definitely give him a run for his money.

Nico found himself wishing Percy was there now, actually, as he caught sight of the geyser of water spouting up where the fire hydrant once stood. Percy could redirect that water and use it like a high powered fire hose, and pin the crazy demigod in place while he interrogated him. As soon as he realized what he was thinking, Nico tried to shove those thoughts aside. He didn't want to have to depend on Percy for everything. He wanted to be able to stand on his own, and be taken seriously by other people.

It was with that in mind that he approached the other demigod who, the other gamers in the card shop, were wisely keeping their distance from.

"Excuse me?" he said.

The demigod responded with something that sounded like, "Garchargh! Blach varaaugh!" as he continued assaulting the Roman Fury window cling. Though to be fair, he might not have been responding to Nico at all. He'd been making similar noises even before Nico approached him.

"Excuse me?" repeated Nico, but that got no response either. "Hey!"

"Gods . . . their fault! Araugh!"

_Nico . . . this demigod is clearly unstable. The wisest course of action would probably be to subdue him and take him to Camp Half-Blood._

_OK, I'll give you that he seems unstable, but . . . it just seems wrong to knock him out and drag him somewhere . . . plus it's not dark enough for me to shadow travel him yet,_ said Nico.

Anubis gave a mental sigh. _Please be careful, however you choose to proceed._

_ Right,_ promised Nico. Then he spoke again to the other demigod. "Hey! Noob! What the crap do you think you're doing? Taking out your daddy issues on a Mythomagic display? You suck!"

_That's not proceeding with caution!_

Perhaps it was not, but it got a reaction from the other demigod, when being polite hadn't. The boy looked up and locked unsettling blue eyes onto Nico's. "Who are you?"

"Nico di Angelo," he answered. "Son of Hades. And you?"

"Son of Hades?" the other demigod growled, his voice rising and falling in weird, disturbing ways, like his vocal chords had been used to string a guitar or something, then unstrung and put back in his throat.

"Yeah," snapped Nico, not liking the way the other guy was looking at him, like he was some sort of weakling who would be cowed. "Wanna make something of it, punk?"

The other demigod blinked, taken aback by Nico's refusal to be cowed. "Hades is bad," the guy muttered after trying to stare Nico down for several seconds longer.

Nico gritted his teeth and fought down the urge to react violently.

_Do not stab him,_ ordered Anubis.

_I wasn't going to . . . even though I'd like do,_ returned Nico. "You think your father's so much better, huh?" asked Nico, trying to redirect the conversation in a way that would get him some information. "But you won't even identify yourself, or your father? Or is it your mom who's a goddess?"

The other demigod continued glaring with those weird blue eyes, and Nico was suddenly struck by how wrong they looked. He couldn't really explain how, but they didn't look natural, the same way bottle blondes or people with dyed red hair didn't look natural. He found himself wondering if the other demigod was wearing contacts, even as he tried to remember if he knew of any god who had eyes like that.

"Have you not been claimed yet?" asked Nico when he was only met with silence. "Is that it? Or are you just ashamed?"

"Ashamed? It is them who should be ashamed!"

"Them? Who?" asked Nico.

"Your father! My father! All the gods!" shouted the demigod. "It's all their fault!"

"What's all their fault?"

"Everything!"

"Alright, look, Leroy –"

"Leroy? My name is not Leroy!"

"Well I have to call you something. So unless you tell me your name and heritage right now, I'm just going to call you Leroy."

"My name . . . is Piers. Son of Kratos."

_The god of strength,_ Anubis supplied.

_Who only has 1700 attack power. Yeah, I know._

"Okay, Piers, son of Kratos – Whoa!" He had to dodge as Piers took a swing at him that probably would have broken him in half.

"Don't call me that! Don't speak of that being as my father! It's his fault! Everything that's happened to me! Everything that's happened to everyone! His fault! Aurghah!"

_Nico –_

_ Shut up! I know what I'm doing!_ Nico ducked under Piers's next punch then came up under his guard and upper-cutted him. As the other demigod staggered, he hooked out one of his legs and sent him falling backwards. "Look," he said angrily, "you're pissed off. I get it. I don't know you, or what's happened to you, but I do know what it's like for demigods. So yeah, you probably have a right to be pissed off. But you don't have the right to go around putting other people in danger! That stunt you pulled with the fire hydrant? You almost killed a kid with that thing!"

Piers growled.

"Growl at me again and I'll cut your throat," threatened Nico. "You think I won't?"

"I know you will. It's your father's fault."

"What's my father's fault? That I'm violent and prone to threatening people with death? Not really," scoffed Nico. "You're not the only one whose had a tough life. I'm a demigod too, remember? I've had to deal with a lot of crap too! I lost my whole family. Now that I've found a new one, I'll do whatever I have to do to protect them. And that kid you almost killed? He's part of my new family. So you will listen when I tell you to control yourself or I'll make sure that you can never hurt anyone ever again. Understand?"

"You think you're strong enough to beat me?"

"You may be the son of the god of strength, but I'm the son of one of the Big Three," said Nico coldly.

"It's not my fault!"

Nico scowled at this weird declaration. "What's not?"

"I didn't want this! It's not my fault! I never wanted his strength! It's his fault! All the gods' faults! They have to be stopped!"

_Are you making any sense of this? _Nico asked Anubis.

_He seems to be blaming your pantheon for something,_ said Anubis.

_Really? What gave you that idea?_

Anubis ignored his sarcasm. _The Roman pantheon might not even play a part in this at all. He could have merely mistaken them for your pantheon, especially since the art on that display wasn't at all accurate._

_ So . . . we still think this guy's buckets of crazy, right?_

_Yes. We do._

_ But now we know he's a buckets of crazy guy on a guilt trip. Possibly caused by hurting someone with his strength?_ guessed Nico.

_Thinking that wouldn't be a stretch,_ agreed Anubis, _though nothing's certain._

_ So . . . I'm thinking the best thing to do would be to knock him out, get him out of here before the cops show up, keep him knocked out, and get us some transport to Camp Half-Blood?_

_ That's what I suggested to begin with,_ Anubis reminded him.

_Yeah, I know, and you were right, but I had to at least try reasoning with him,_ said Nico. _For all the good it did._

Trying to be responsible sucked, Nico was starting to realize. He didn't know how Percy did it. It would have been so much easier just to knock the crazy son of Kratos out, instead of talking with him. The only useful thing he'd learned was that Piers's father was the Greek god of strength.

_You don't happen to have a sleep spell handy, do you? _Nico asked Anubis. _Because if you don't, I'm going to have to club him over the head until he passes out._

_ Give me control,_ requested Anubis, and Nico obliged. Then the god pointed two fingers down at Piers and spoke several words. The hieroglyphics for "deep sleep" appeared in the air around him, and then Piers was down for the count.

_And now if you could just toss him into my Duat storage for me, _requested Nico.

_You want me to do _what?

_ Where else are we going to put him? If you have any ideas, speak up now. The cops are here._

It was true. A squad car had just pulled up, close to, but not too close to, the place where Piers had pulled up the fire hydrant. The store owner hurried out through the front door to speak to the officer, and started gesturing toward Piers, and by default, Nico as well.

_Hmm. Perhaps the best course of action now would be to let them take him into custody, and have Camp Half-Blood arrange for an extraction._

_ And have him wake up and go on a rampage in jail?_ asked Nico.

_They'll take him to a hospital. The spell I cast will have rendered him comatose for at least twenty-four hours._

_ I should probably be upset about the comatose part . . . but I'm really not,_ Nico told him. _That'll make it easier for the extraction team._

* * *

The cover story wasn't too far out there, and the cops and store owner seemed to buy it. Nico didn't try to refute what Piers had done, since he couldn't manipulate the Mist and rewrite peoples' memories about what had just happened. So he just told them that he tried to calm Piers down, though he didn't let people know that he knew the guy's name. Then he claimed that Piers had a seizure, and told them he thought it might be drug related, because that guy seemed strung out on something. An ambulance was called, and the paramedics took him to the hospital. Then Nico, Sadie, and Felix withdrew back to Brooklyn House.

Nico headed to his room immediately to gather his stuff, so that he could get ready to head back to camp.

"Do you really have to leave?" asked Sadie from his doorway as he grabbed his backpack and started packing. "Can't you just like . . . get the people from your camp to take care of this?"

"They don't know what happened," Nico reminded her.

"So call them. Let them know. Then let them take care of it," said Sadie. 'That's what they do, right?"

"They're going to want me to repeat the story. Multiple times," said Nico. "And they're going to want me to be on hand to answer all their questions while they try to fish for details."

"But you just got here." Sadie did not look pleased at all.

"Sorry," said Nico. "If it's any consolation, it shouldn't take too long. I'll probably be back by tomorrow."

"Except you're forgetting how this is going to turn out to be something bigger than just a random demigod freaking out on a store window. Something that's probably going to involve your Roman demigod counterparts still being alive, and restarting a war, that you're bound to get wrapped up in, probably on some covert assignment that requires you to go deep undercover, then the next thing you know, you'll be gone for another three weeks doing work for your demigod camp," huffed Sadie.

"Woman, stop jinxing me," growled Nico. "It's almost like you want that to happen."

"Be serious," snapped Sadie. "Jinxes aren't real."

"Oh yes they are."

"And we need you here," said Sadie. "Not off running around the country, doing demigod work for your camp again. Not goofing off with Percy at beach week. Here. At Brooklyn House. Helping us so we can beat Apophis!"

"I have been helping you," protested Nico.

"You've been helping us part time with a few sword fighting lessons."

"And gathering information for you when I'm away. And what more can I really do here other than combat classes?" asked Nico. "That's all I'm good at that's of any use here. I suck at magic."

"So you should be coming to our classes and getting better so you can help us," snapped Sadie. "So that if we get in a pinch, you can use magic too."

"If we get in a pinch and I have to cast a spell, Anubis will take over," said Nico, dropping his voice.

"But what about after we figure out how to separate you and Anubis?" asked Sadie.

"Then I probably won't be able to do Egyptian magic at all," pointed out Nico. He tried not to sound too stung by what Sadie was saying. "I'm sorry I have to leave, Sadie, but you know I have to do this."

"What we have to do is figure out what Apophis is doing attacking random museums," said Sadie.

"We've been trying. I've been helping you, remember?" asked Nico.

"You haven't even looked over the pictures we took of the last one to try to help us find a pattern," said Sadie.

"I'll look at them as soon as I get back, but I have to take care of this demigod problem first," said Nico.

"Hey," said Carter, coming up behind Sadie. "Felix said something happened?"

Nico started shoving the few things that he'd need into his backpack as Sadie summarized the trip's highlights.

"Wow. That sounds like a headache," said Carter once Sadie had finished. "I guess you need to go deal with the extraction team or whatever?"

Nico shook his head. "They'll probably send satyrs to extract him, since they can pass as grown-ups. I need to go answer whatever questions they have about the incident and how Piers was acting."

"How long do you think that will take?" asked Carter.

"With luck I'll be back here by tomorrow."

"Alright. That's good. Because we could really use your help here," said Carter.

"I'm sorry," said Nico, to Carter and Sadie both. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

Sadie gave him a disappointed look.

"It's not like I'm abandoning you," said Nico. "Get me a copy of those pictures of the place Apophis wrecked. I'll look at them while I'm at camp."

Carter nodded. "I'll go get them for you." Then he hurried back into the hall, leaving Nico alone with Sadie again.

"I'm sorry," said Nico to her again. "I promise, I'll –"

"I just keep having flashbacks to the last time we knew Apophis was up to something and that we'd be facing him soon," Sadie cut him off. "How you went into the Duat with Anubis to do what you had to do, and then you went missing for like a month."

Nico frowned at her. "It was only two weeks."

"That's not the point! The point is, we didn't know what happened to you," said Sadie. "We had no way of knowing whether you were alive or dead. Then everything started happening so fast, and when we finally learned you were alive, we couldn't even go to help you, because we had to stop Apophis."

Nico shook his head helplessly. "I'm sorry. I never meant for that to happen . . . but this is completely different, Sadie. I'm just going to Camp Half-Blood, and just for a day."

"I've just got the feeling that something bad is going to happen."

Nico didn't like the sound of that. He was aware that foresight ran in Sadie's family. It wasn't clear if she had inherited it or not, but her being worried was enough to make Nico worried too.

"It will be alright, Sadie," he said, hoping he sounded more certain than he felt. "I'll be back in time to figure out where Apophis is going to strike for the next new moon. And I'll be there to help you kick his butt next time. There's no way I'm going to miss two prize fights in a row."

Sadie hit him. Not too hard, just hard enough to sting. "You better not," she said imperiously. "Or I'll tattoo the word 'Slacker' across your forehead. You see if I don't."

Nico managed a laugh at that. "Sure you will. And by the way, you hit like a girl."

He ducked away from Sadie's next punch, knowing that that one really would have hurt, and dodged around her, into the hall.

"Hey! Get back here!" shouted Sadie, chasing after him.

But even though she sounded like she wanted to pummel him, and actually really did want to pummel him, she wasn't truly upset anymore, Nico knew. That was good enough for him, for now at least.

* * *

AN: Thank you everyone for your reviews! I love getting feedback on my fics, because it makes it feel more worthwhile for me to see what people think. Btw, MEleesmasher, I wrote the beginning overlapping with the last chapter because of your request. And congrats to general zargon who guessed that the new demigod was a son of Kratos. Sorry to everyone I misled into thinking that was Jason in the last chapter. I guess from what little I revealed about that demigod, him being Jason was a logical assumption. But if Jason wanted to attack a Mythomagic display like that in front of Nico, the two of them would have ended up reviving all the old rivalries and starting a war right there, so that cannot be. And Hazel won't be appearing in this fic, but she will be appearing in the sequel to it. I have a good plan for how to bring her in that I'm pretty proud of. I wanted to have a good reason to bring her in that would work and be supported by elements from the canon, and not just have Nico stumble across her in the Underworld or something. And I finally figured out a way that will work, so yay.

And just so you guys know, in a day or few I'll be posting a new fic that'll be a crossover of Percy Jackson and The Gargoyle Legends. It's going to be called 'Saints and Angels', and it's only going to be about three chapters long total. I'll be prioritizing updates for this fic, but I've wanted to write a PJ/GL crossover for awhile now. 'Saints and Angels' is just going to be a fic where Nico di Angelo and Abdiel St. Jude (a character with a history just as tragic as Nico's) meet each other by chance and run into each other three random times, the first time being the night that Nico learns of Bianca's death, after he ran away from camp. But no prior knowledge of The Gargoyle Legends saga is necessary to understand what's going on though, so please give it a try when it's posted.

The next update for this fic will hopefully be up by the middle of next week. I'm traveling over the weekend so if you send me a PM then it'll take me a few days to get back to you. Thanks again everyone. Peace.


	4. Chapter 4

4

The process started off as tediously as Nico predicted it would. He took a taxi to Camp Half-Blood, or as close as one could get him to it, because it wasn't dark enough to shadow travel yet. He knew that he probably could have saved himself a good chunk of money if he'd called Percy and asked him for a ride, but he didn't want to do that. Percy had his own life. One that was filled with a lot more tedious, mundane things than Nico's. Things like school, homework, family obligations, and the like. Sometimes Nico envied him. But that aside, this wasn't Percy's problem. Nico saw no reason to make it Percy's problem, because there really wasn't anything that Percy could do about the situation. He hadn't been there when it happened, so he couldn't answer all the questions Chiron and Mr. D had about what happened. So Nico came on his own, ready to deal with it on his own.

But when it was all said and done, he might as well have bugged Percy for a ride, because Chiron ended up calling Percy and all the other cabin heads back to camp anyway for an emergency meeting after the satyrs retrieved Piers from the hospital and Chiron and Mr. D got a look at him.

Percy and Annabeth arrived together. Holding hands. Looking very happy together. Nico was glad. He knew that a few months ago, they'd been having problems. Annabeth knew that Percy and Nico were keeping things from her. Or more accurately, that Nico had secrets, that he let Percy in on, but that Percy wouldn't reveal to her. Nico felt bad about the strain that had put on their relationship, but over the past half year or so, things had started going smoothly between them again. In large part because Nico hadn't gotten into anymore tight spots since Apophis tried to swallow the sun, so he hadn't had to call Percy to bail him out. And it helped that Sadie and Carter had stayed away from Camp Half-Blood.

The time they showed up had caused a lot of problems, though it wasn't really their fault. They'd accidentally gotten picked up by a half-blood extraction team in Washington, when they were on the run from some House of Life freaks, and had stumbled upon the demigods who the extraction team was there to pick up, while said demigods were being attacked. Naturally, Sadie and Carter had helped them out, then had gone along with the extraction team because they needed to make a fast getaway if they didn't want the House of Life catching them. Their timing for this incident had been horrible for a number of reasons.

One of the lesser reasons was that the Hunters of Artemis had shown up because Thalia had gotten an Iris Message from Nico's deceased sister Bianca. She'd grown concerned that something (Anubis) was blocking her ability to check in (spy) on Nico, and when asking Percy about it proved fruitless, she'd called the leader of the Hunters. Annabeth found out why Thalia was there, and knew that Percy knew something, and had gotten mad when Percy refused to give away Nico's secrets. Nico felt bad about causing problems for them, but keeping the truth a secret was necessary. If word got out that Nico was hosting Anubis, a war was bound to start one way or another. Either Hades would declare war on the Egyptian pantheon for corrupting his son, Zeus would declare war on Hades and the Egyptian pantheon for making what he'd perceive as a power play against him, or the Egyptian pantheon would start kidnapping demigods and trying to use them as hosts, and bring down the wrath of the Greek pantheon on them. Whatever way the dice fell, it would suck, which was why they couldn't tell Annabeth and Thalia the truth.

But the main reason that Sadie and Carter's arrival had been horrible timing was because one of the demigods the team had picked up was a psychotic murderer, who'd killed two people before she was figured out. That girl, Maya, had been one of the youngest demigods at camp, and looked deceptively sweet and innocent, at least before she bit Nico after he stopped her from stabbing Sadie. She'd broken his skin and gotten a mouthful of his black blood, which had rotted her face off, and she didn't look that sweet or innocent anymore. But before they'd figured out who the psycho killer was, suspicion had fallen heavily on all the newcomers. If anyone had learned that Sadie and Carter were actually Egyptian magicians rather than demigods, things could have gotten ugly. Because lately the demigods were being taught to view the Egyptians as a threat.

When Percy saw Nico, he immediately went to sit down beside him, while Annabeth moved to talk with some of her friends who were the heads of other cabins.

"So what's this I hear about you getting in trouble again?" teased Percy as he took a seat in the empty chair next to Nico's.

"I didn't get in trouble," said Nico defensively. "All I did was find a crazy demigod and subdue him. And it wasn't in any way my fault. And I don't know why Chiron called a meeting about it."

Percy looked surprised. "Uh, I was joking about you being in trouble. I didn't even know what this meeting was about. But . . . this is seriously about you digging up trouble?"

"I didn't dig it up," said Nico. "It found me, so I dealt with it."

Percy frowned at him, his green eyes questioning. "Why didn't you call me? I would have helped you."

"I don't need your help for everything, you know," snapped Nico.

"Whoa, I didn't mean you did," said Percy quickly. His sea green eyes took on a hurt look, which immediately made Nico feel guilty for snapping at Percy.

"Sorry," he said quickly. "I didn't mean . . . just, sorry."

"You alright?" asked Percy.

Nico nodded.

"You need to talk?" And by that, Percy meant "Do you need to talk later?" Because he was well aware that if Nico had any problems, they most likely involved someone or something Egyptian, and they could hardly discuss those in the Big House, in front of lots of other demigods.

Nico shook his head. "Nothing in particular is wrong right now. I guess I'm just tired."

He pulled his knees up to his chest and settled in to wait for everyone else to arrive. There were a lot more cabin leaders than there used to be, since at the end of the Titan War they'd had to build a lot of new cabins. Lou Ellen from the Hecate cabin waved to him as she entered, so Nico returned her wave. He nodded to Leo, who he was kind-of friends with, and smiled at Piper, overjoyed to see that she had taken over the Aphrodite cabin.

"When did that happen?" he asked Percy, who followed his gaze over to the daughter of Aphrodite.

"Last weekend," said Percy, smiling as well.

"Ding-dong, the witch is dead," said Nico, making all those close enough to hear him laugh.

That was the last light moment that they had for the rest of the evening. Minutes later, Chiron entered. The look of thinly veiled distress on his face stole away everyone's good mood. "Is everyone here? Good. Then we should get started."

"Where's Mr. D?" asked Percy.

"At Olympus. Speaking with the other gods."

Everyone immediately sat up a bit straighter. This was more serious than any of them had thought if the gods themselves were meeting to talk about it.

"What's going on?" Leo asked, his usual smirk replaced by uncharacteristic seriousness.

Chiron took a moment to gather his thoughts before speaking. "This afternoon Nico stumbled upon a demigod who . . . how shall I put this? Whose sanity could be called into question. The incident was in no way his fault," he added sharply, before anyone could give Nico any accusing glances. "He was able to diffuse the situation admirably, and our extraction satyrs retrieved the unstable demigod. Nico? Would you care to fill everyone in on the details?"

Nico would rather not have. It was only the twenty-billionth time he'd repeated the story. But he knew that if he didn't tell them now, Percy and Annabeth would come bug him later while he was trying to sleep, so it was easiest just to get it over now. He gave them the mostly true version of the story. In fact, everything he told them was true. He just left out certain details, like how he'd been at the card shop with two Egyptian magicians, and how he'd gotten Anubis to use a sleep spell to knock Piers unconscious.

"Mr. D took a look at Piers when he was brought in," said Chiron. "Even with the boy unconscious he could sense the madness that had infected the boy. He cured what he could. We won't know the full extent of how deep his madness ran or what sort of trauma caused it until he awakens, but if he's anything like the others he'll be devoid of any memories relating to it."

"What?" asked Piper, looking blank.

"I feel like I'm missing a few pieces of the puzzle," said Leo.

Chiron shook his head looking weary. "Forgive me. This was the sole purpose of calling this meeting. To tell you that this demigod is the latest in a disturbing trend to display the exact same strain of madness. Mr. D identified Piers' madness as the same kind that affected Maya earlier this year."

Nico cringed at the memory of the murderous little girl, and what had happened to her, and felt the eyes of most of the other people in the room fall on him. Even though he wasn't to blame for her madness. Only for her face. Or for her not having a face.

"What ever happened to that girl?" asked Will Solace from the Apollo cabin.

Chiron hesitated and Nico got the distinct feeling he wasn't going to like whatever Chiron was about to say. "She lives in the attic now."

There were a number of unsettled murmurs at this admission.

"That is so _Jane Eyre_," muttered Annabeth.

"Who?" asked Percy and Nico in unison.

Annabeth waved one hand impatiently, letting them know that it wasn't important.

"Am I the only one who thinks that idea is horrible?" asked Clarisse.

"We know that the situation isn't ideal," said Chiron. "But it is all that we've been able to manage for now. She cannot be admitted to a regular hospital or asylum –"

"I thought Mr. D cured her of madness," said Percy.

"He did. Unfortunately, he cannot always remove all of its effects. Or not effects but rather its cause, and side effects linked to that."

"So . . . is she still mad or not?" asked Percy.

"She is not mad," said Chiron wearily. "She is . . . not well, to put it mildly."

"That unwell girl killed two people and tried to kill two more," said Clarisse tersely. "If you're keeping her here at camp, I think we have a right to know her mental state, Chiron."

"Some days she seems like a normal, albeit sad little girl," elaborated Chiron. "Other days, she is nearly catatonic. She'll spend an entire day in a chair by the window just looking outside and won't speak. Those days she seems severely depressed. Even on her good days she will not talk with us about what happened to make her this way."

"Piers and Maya aren't the only two demigods to be found this way?" asked Annabeth, her grey eyes sharp.

Chiron shook his head. "There had been two others. Neither one has ever been to this camp. One remains with her family being cared for by them. The other took his own life."

Sad and uncertain silence met this revelation.

"So what did they all have in common?" asked Nico, when he felt he'd been respectful and held his tongue long enough. "You found something out, didn't you? Otherwise there wouldn't be any reason for you to have called all the cabin leaders back."

"What did you find, Chiron?" Annabeth asked, adding her own voice to Nico's question, for which Nico was glad. Chiron trusted Annabeth more than any other camper, since he'd practically raised her. He tended to answer her before all others, whether he meant to or not.

"There was one thing that all these demigods had in common," admitted Chiron. "Each one had been enrolled for a time at the Heart of Liberty Boarding School for Special Needs Children."

"So what are we waiting for?" asked Clarisse. "Let's go raid those punks and find out what's up with that place?"

"We can't just go charging in," argued Annabeth. "We need a plan. Are there any satyrs undercover there yet Chiron?"

Chiron shook his head. "We have been having difficulty placing an agent within the school. Even manipulating the Mist has not proven fruitful. And we have run out of satyrs who might actually be accepted into that school."

"Why? What are their qualifications?" Annabeth wanted to know.

"Age is the primary factor limiting us. They accept children no older than twelve. Provided that factor is met, they are required to undergo a personality test and a psychological evaluation," said Chiron. "We are not certain what they are looking for when they screen their applicants."

"What does 'special needs' mean?" asked Nico.

"Children who need more help to succeed in their education than the average kid," explained Annabeth. "Many demigods are classified as that at whatever school we go to because of our dyslexia and ADHD, but it can mean a number of other things as well. Like spectrum disorders or down syndrome."

Nico had no idea what spectrum disorders or down syndromes were, but he got the gist of it. "I'm guessing you told the people there that the satyrs were dyslexic and ADHD when you tried to get them admitted?"

Chiron nodded. "And it did not work. So it appears that whatever they are looking for is more specific than the two general signifiers for demigods."

"So what do we do now?" asked Leo. "I get that you're out of satyrs to infiltrate the place, but we can't sit back and do nothing if they're doing something to make demigods go crazy."

"We should attack them head on," said Clarisse. "A show of force will get us whatever information we need from their employees."

"We can't just go invading places," argued Miranda Gardiner.

"You're right of course," said Piper. "But Clarisse and Leo are also right. We can't do nothing when our brothers and sisters are being hurt. Isn't there anyone else we could send to try to infiltrate the school?"

"We have already made attempts to enroll all of our satyrs who are young enough to be accepted," said Chiron. "We have no others."

"Then give them what they want," said Clarisse. "Send a demigod."

"We can't do that," protested Miranda.

"Sure we can."

"In theory we could," said Percy. "In actuality, we can't. They don't accept anyone over the age of twelve. We don't have that many campers here who are that young, except during the summers. But even if we did, we still couldn't send them. They're too young. Too inexperienced."

"I seem to remember a certain someone stealing a certain master lightning bolt when he was only twelve," said Clarisse.

Percy bristled. "I didn't steal the stupid thing, I went on a quest to clear my name. And that was different."

"Why? Because it's you and you're so much more badass than everyone else?"

"No," said Percy, and he started to say more, but Nico cut him off.

"Actually, he is," Nico felt obligated to point out. "And there's –"

"A quest consists of three campers going on a journey," said Percy, speaking over Nico. "And it's dangerous, yeah. There are monsters, and ancient enemies, and things we've never heard of, but on a quest you have someone watching your back. You work as a team to do what has to be done, and usually at least one member of the questing party has at least a little bit of experience at that kind of stuff. With this . . . I don't even know what you want to call it, but fiasco sounds about right. Whoever we sent in would be all alone. No back up. No guarantee they'd even have access to their weapons if they needed to fight. If anything happened to them they'd be trapped. They'd have no way to escape."

Nico coughed meaningfully.

"Sending in an inexperienced child isn't even an option," said Percy, pointedly ignoring Nico. "We'll figure out something else."

"We actually –" started Nico.

"Like you're the final word on anything, Jackson," growled Clarisse.

"We're not sending some untrained child into a situation we know is dangerous but don't know anything else about –"

"I volunteer as tribute!" shouted Nico.

That finally got peoples' attention.

"Oh, I've also been meaning to ask, Will, is Katniss your sister? Because –"

"Nico," said Percy. "No."

"I'm the obvious choice," said Nico, deciding to shelve the _Hunger Games_ jokes.

"You're too old," pointed out Percy.

"I thought the shrimp was twelve," said Clarisse.

"He was twelve," said Percy. "He's got to be thirteen now."

"He doesn't look it," said Annabeth, ignoring the upset look Percy sent her way. "He could pass as eleven or twelve easily."

Normally Nico would have argued, but that wouldn't have helped his cause that night. "I'm the most qualified choice out of anyone you could send, even if age wasn't a factor. I'm the son of one of the Big Three, so I'm stronger than the average demigod. And even if they catch me, they can't hold me. I can shadow travel. And my blood is necrotic acid. It'll burn through handcuffs, ropes, walls, glass –"

"People's faces," muttered someone. Nico wasn't sure who. Probably one of the councilors of the lesser gods' cabins.

Nico scowled. "Yes, peoples' faces too, but there's a simple solution for how to avoid that. Don't. Bite. Me."

"Chiron," Percy tried to appeal to the centaur, "this is a bad idea."

"In what way, Percy?" asked Chiron.

Percy hesitated. "This is just . . . dangerous."

"It is dangerous no matter who undertakes it," said Chiron. "And though I would never have asked this of him, and would never force him to go, he has volunteered. And he's right. He is clearly the best one to undertake this mission."

* * *

Percy was not happy about the way things had turned out, but he wasn't an unreasonable person, for which Nico was glad. He could clearly see that Nico was the best person to send in, and in the end admitted it. Nico knew he still wasn't happy, so he was expecting him when Percy came stomping into the Hades Cabin that night while he was looking over the pictures of Apophis's last attack.

"You don't have to do this, you know," said Percy by way of announcing himself.

"I know I don't," said Nico. "The same way you didn't have to go on that quest to find Zeus's lightning bolt."

"That was completely different," said Percy. "If I didn't do that then there would have been war between the gods."

"And if I don't do this then more demigods will be driven out of their minds," said Nico.

"You have no idea what you're walking into," argued Percy.

"Whatever it is can't be any worse than half the crap I've had to deal with," returned Nico.

"You don't know that," said Percy.

"Actually, I do know that," said Nico.

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do."

Percy glared at him. Or tried to. It was harder for him to pull off a real glare when he wasn't really mad.

"I appreciate you being worried," said Nico, trying hard to sound sincere. And he was sincere. He just hoped he didn't sound sarcastic. "I appreciate everything you've done for me. But you know I'm right Percy. You _know._"

Percy heaved a sigh. "Yeah. I know. Doesn't mean I like it."

Nico nodded. "But you know I'll be fine. If you've got to worry about someone, worry about whoever tries to stop me. Or have you forgotten that incident during beach week?"

That actually made Percy laugh. "That . . . that was bad."

"Not that bad," lied Nico.

"Worse than bad."

"It all worked out in the end."

Percy shook his head. Then he shifted his attention to the pictures that Nico had spread out across his cabin. "What's all this?"

"Something for Sadie and Carter." Which was code for 'freaky Egyptian stuff that we shouldn't discuss here, because if we start then we just know Annabeth's going to come charging in, and Thalia and the Hunters are going to show up, and since bad things happen in threes we can expect something else to go wrong too.'

"Oh. Well. Looks destructive," commented Percy.

"It is. But I think I've got it," said Nico. "The thing I was trying to figure out. I just need to let them know."

"Need me to carry a message?"

"Nah, Anubis can do it. I'll let him know what to tell them tomorrow, after I've left camp." And Nico would be leaving for the boarding school in the morning, rather than shadow traveling there that night. He'd be going with a satyr who would be pretending to be his step-father. Annoying, but necessary, since twelve-year-olds couldn't enroll themselves in boarding schools.

"He'll be with you at the school?" asked Percy.

"Yeah." Anubis might keep his presence in Nico's head to a minimum while they were at camp, but it was doubtful that he'd have to do that at the school. And he was another reason why Nico was the best choice to send undercover. Because even if the school was prepared to handle demigods, there was no way they were prepared to handle demigodlings. "So you can see, no matter what happens there, I'll be just fine."

* * *

_ Sadie was searching frantically for something, but she didn't know what. She just knew that if she didn't find it soon, something terrible was going to happen. She had no idea where she was, or how she had gotten there. Nor did she care. It wasn't as important as what she was there to do._

_ She ran through a long stone hallway as fast as she could. All the doors were open, and she could get glimpses inside of them, but she didn't slow down. She instinctively knew that what she was looking for wasn't in any of them. But from what she could see of those rooms from her peripheral vision, they looked like classrooms. Or maybe research rooms at a university. In one room the walls were covered with photographs of peoples' eyes. Just their eyes. The rest of their faces had been cropped out of the picture. In another there was a white-board covered with symbols that Sadie recognized as Greek letters, from her time spent around Nico._

_ Nico._

_ That's what, no who, she was looking for, she realized._

_ As soon as she realized that, she saw him, like that realization had summoned him. He was standing at the end of the hallway, his back to her._

_ "Nico!" she shouted, not out of breath even though she'd been sprinting. "Nico!"_

_ He didn't turn around so Sadie ran all the way to him and grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling him around to face her._

_ When she did, she got a shock._

_ Nico stared at her blankly through disturbing, unnaturally blue eyes. Eyes the same shade of blue as Piers's. On that crazy demigod it had looked strange, like he was wearing contacts to change his eyes to that color, and like it wasn't the natural way for his eyes to look, but on Nico it looked even more wrong. Maybe because Sadie knew him, and knew that his eyes were supposed to be that dark, dark shadowy color that she could never quite pin down. But that didn't explain why seeing Nico with eerie blue eyes horrified Sadie so much that she couldn't even stand it._

_ She opened her mouth to scream –_

- and woke up gasping, with a killer headache threatening to split her skull wide open.


	5. Chapter 5

5

Nico passed the entrance exam for the Heart of Liberty Boarding School for Special Needs Children with flying colors. During his entrance test he'd been moody, surly, and deliberately hostile toward the evaluators, much to the dismay of the satyr pretending to be his step-father. Nico was pretty sure he knew where the satyrs had gone wrong when trying to plant their agents there. No kid in their right mind wanted to be sent to a boarding school, let alone one for special needs children. They'd probably been all friendly and enthusiastic and cooperative. That was probably what blew their cover and got them rejected. They were too obviously trying to infiltrate the place to spy on it.

Nico got his photo taken for his student ID card that very same day. The next morning, he was in classes. Boring, boring classes. Something he hadn't been subjected to since he was ten. Somehow school hadn't seemed necessary after finding out he was the son of Hades. He wasn't sure why. Maybe it had been because it seemed like death was hanging over his head, and he wasn't going to have a future. Funny how little had changed. Nico had never even thought about what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wasn't even sure what jobs a child of the Underworld was qualified to do.

His first class was reading some story or another, which was all well and good, except Nico didn't read. So he passed the time instead examining the other students.

He quickly came to the conclusion that no one in his English class was a demigod except him. None of them had the look and he couldn't feel power coming off of any of them. He did notice something of interest, however. There was a sense of fear in the classroom. The students were all nervous about something, but Nico couldn't pinpoint what.

Their teacher wasn't any scarier than the average teacher. She was certainly less scary than Dr. Thorn had been. But it was something about her that the other students were worried about. They were trying too hard. Paying a little too much attention. And when mistakes were made, or there was something they didn't know, they were all more nervous than they should have been.

It didn't take him long to realize that there was a general aura of fear over the student population in almost every class, but in English it was the worst. At lunch on his second day there, he tried asking some of the other students about it.

"Kids who don't do well in English are most likely to be singled out for the Blue Ward," Hugo, a boy who he had English with told him.

"The Blue Ward?" asked Nico. "What's that?"

The other kids Nico was eating with all looked around nervously, like they were afraid someone was listening in, then leaned their heads toward the center of the table. A guy named Gene spoke in a hushed voice.

"It's where they send kids to do experiments on them."

"No, seriously," said Nico.

"He is serious," said Hugo. "If you get selected for the Blue Ward they really do experiment on you. The kids they choose for that program stay separate from the rest of us, because they don't want us knowing what they're doing, but we know, you know?"

Nico shook his head. "I really don't know."

"You can hear the screams sometimes at night," said a girl named Cally. "Kids from the Blue Ward screaming."

"That's when they experiment on them."

Nico considered this. Normally, he probably would have dismissed those claims as urban legends, and stupid ones at that. But something _was_ being done to demigods to drive them insane. And if the demigods were the ones being sent to this Blue Ward then that would explain why kids who did poorly in English were sent there. Now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure why he hadn't been immediately sent to this Blue Ward since on his admissions forms, his dyslexia and ADHD had both been documented. Perhaps because there were plenty of non-demigods in the world with both dyslexia and ADHD and they didn't want any mixups?

"Why is it called the Blue Ward?" he asked.

"Because all the kids there have unnaturally blue eyes," said Cally.

"Even if they don't have blue eyes when they went in, they do when they come out."

Nico frowned, remembering how the son of Kratos's eyes had been that unnatural blue color. But . . . "That's impossible. Your eye color doesn't change."

"It can. Like if you get old and get cataracts. Or if you have an eyeball transplant –"

"If the people in the Blue Ward are kids then they're not going to have cataracts," pointed out Nico. "And eyeball transplants . . . I seriously doubt that's what it is."

"It's actually called the Blue Ward because the walls in that ward are all painted blue," said Taron, an older student who was about Nico's age. "But it's true that they've been doing something there to change the kids' eye color. That started about two years ago."

"But that's impossible," repeated Nico. "You can't just change someone's eye color. If you could, people would probably be lining up to have it done. Tons of people with dark eyes probably wish they'd been born with blue eyes."

"Technically, it is possible to turn your eyes blue," argued Taron. "There have been times where peoples' eyes have turned blue if they've been poked in them repeatedly. Sometimes even just once, hard enough."

"You think they're repeatedly poking them in the eyes?" Nico winced at the thought.

"I don't know what they're doing. I don't want to know. I just don't want to get sent there. Ever. So I do everything I can to stay on the straight and narrow. You should do the same," advised Taron.

"Noted," Nico told him, even though he was at that very minute trying to figure out a way to sneak into the Blue Ward.

* * *

That night Nico ran into a snag when he tried to Iris Message Percy.

Technically, Nico didn't have to check in with anyone for a few more days. Chiron wanted him to check in with them at least once a week, so they could make sure nothing was wrong with him, but Nico knew Percy was going to be worrying, so he got out his prism and prepared to send his cousin an IM. The problem arose when he realized that no matter what way he held the prism in his room's light, it wouldn't make a rainbow.

_Is something wrong with the prism?_ he wondered, holding it up in front of his eyes.

_Most likely the problem lies with the lights,_ Anubis told him, speaking up for the first time since Nico had enrolled in the school.

_What do you mean? And where have you been all day, by the way?_

_Your classes bored me, so I attended to my other duties. And I have a message for you from Sadie. _

_Oh? _asked Nico.

_She is very angry about your decision._

Nico had known that she would be, given that it was what she'd been afraid of, but it hadn't been avoidable. Camp Half-Blood needed someone inside this school, or else more half-bloods were going to get hurt. And Nico was the best person for the job. He wasn't that great a magician. Carter and Sadie could get along fine without him for all things magic related. If it looked like a battle was on the horizon, Nico was fully prepared to ditch school for however long it took to school Apophis, or whoever else was messing with the Kanes, but for anything less they didn't need him. He knew it. They knew it too. So he refused to feel guilty for not being at Brooklyn House that week.

_I had to do this,_ Nico told Anubis. _I'm the best person, heck, the only person who can do this job. Most of the time for missions with Sadie and Carter I end up just standing in the background and scowling at people for them._

_You underestimate your importance to them, Nico._

_Not really. I know I'm important for gathering information for them, spying on people for them, tracking stuff down, and figuring stuff out . . . that kind of stuff,_ said Nico. _That's what I'm good at. Not spell slinging, or diplomatic discussions with other magicians._

_They rely on you for other things as well, Nico. Your shadow traveling makes you invaluable to them -_

_Only when they need to go somewhere that doesn't have a relic for them to portal off of._

_And they value your intelligence._

Nico gave a mental laugh. _I'm not smart, Anubis._

_No one else has been able to figure out what all of Apophis's recent attacks have had in common._

_It was only a matter of time before someone figured out it was that book, since that really was the only thing they all had in common, _insisted Nico.

_But the book is such a common one, it is nearly as common in Egyptian museum displays as . . . as prayer books are in churches. If you hadn't realized that it was the author -_

_That really doesn't matter right now, _said Nico. _What I can't figure out right now is why this prism won't work. Do prisms have expiration dates?_

It was Anubis's turn to give a telepathic laugh. _No. The problem lies with the light. _

_What's wrong with it?_

_Prism separate light into the different colors of the spectrum to make a rainbow. This light is . . . scrambled. And dimmed. Most likely deliberately._

_To keep demigods from being able to spy on this place,_ said Nico.

_More likely to keep them from calling for help,_ said Anubis darkly.

_Well then . . . they fail. _Nico turned off his room's light and walked over to the window. He intended to shadow travel to New York, to Percy's fire escape. Then maybe after that to Brooklyn House, to try and calm Sadie down. But before he could, something caught his eye. A dark shape beyond the fence that surrounded the school, then a glint of light at the right level for it to be reflected off of human eyes. _Did you see that?_

_It appears someone is sneaking around._

_Let's go find out why._

With little more than a thought, Nico shadow traveled himself from his room to beyond the school's perimeter. He took care to appear far enough away from whoever was sneaking around that he wouldn't be seen or heard. His first real glimpse of the guy struck Nico with a sense of familiarity. Like he'd met this boy before.

Within seconds, Nico was 100 percent certain that the sneaking boy was a demigod, and a strong one. He could feel power radiating him just as strongly as it radiated off of Percy or Thalia when their ADHD kicked in during battle to give them a heightened sense of awareness. Which meant that this demigod was extremely wary and on guard, expecting trouble.

_What do you think?_ he asked Anubis.

_Too soon to tell._

_He's spying, but not infiltrating, _observed Nico. _Yet he's on full guard, like he knows that there's something dangerous around this place. The question is: does he know what that something is?_

_It's impossible to tell just from observing him._

_I guess I should ask him then?_

_I didn't suggest that,_ protested Anubis immediately.

_Do you think it's a bad idea?_

Anubis hesitated to answer. _It is a risk. For all we know, he could very well be the cause of what has been happening around here._

_Do you think that asking him what he's doing and what he knows is more or less dangerous that breaking into the Blue Ward tonight?_ asked Nico.

_Probably less,_ said Anubis grudgingly.

_Then I think I'll risk it._

Nico considered his situation for a moment, trying to think of a way to get this demigod's attention without startling him too much. He didn't want to end up with a concealed weapon in his chest.

So, Nico made sure he was out of immediate weapon range, then scuffed his foot softly against the ground. As he expected, the other demigod jumped and spun toward the source of the noise. A blazing gold sword was suddenly in his hand, dispelling the shadows around him, but not the ones around Nico. Nico let the ones near him fall away slowly so that the other demigod could see him, and held up his hands to show they were empty.

Then he should have said something reassuring like: "I don't want a fight," or "I come in peace," but the truth was, Nico didn't know if those were true. Depending on what this other demigod was doing here, he might end up wanting a fight. So instead he greeted the other demigod a bit more casually.

"Sup?"

"Who . . . a demigod?" the other asked. Nico stiffened slightly at his voice, unable to shake how familiar that was too. He couldn't clearly see the other demigod's face yet, because his glowing sword was casting a weird light over it that bleached out his features, but Nico was 90 percent certain that he knew this guy.

"Yeah," confirmed Nico. "Like you. So, uh . . ."

_Real smooth._

_Shut up, _Nico told the god in his head. To the other demigod he said, "I'm kind of new in the area, but this school . . . is . . . a place of interest, I guess. So when I saw you hanging around . . ."

"You wanted to know what I was doing here." The other demigod cast a wary look toward the school then put away his weapon, probably worried about the light it was giving off. "I'll tell you what I know if you'll tell me what you know. But not here. If we're caught here -"

"There's a McDonald's only a couple blocks from here," suggested Nico.

The other nodded. "That will work."

He started walking toward Nico, closing the distance between them, and drew close enough for them to see each other's faces clearly for the first time. Recognition struck them both at the exact same moment.

"You!" they both said in unison.

"Purple shirt! Macho leader guy!" exclaimed Nico.

"Grocery store! Hellhounds! Overprotective sister!" Jason rattled off the key points he remembered about his first run in with Nico.

Nico winced a bit at the last one. "Zia's not my sister, but yeah . . . Your name is Jason, right?" he asked to quickly change the subject.

"Jason Grace. Not Macho leader guy," said Jason, a good-natured smile on his face. "And you're . . . Nicolas, was it?"

"Nico," corrected Nico. "Nico di Angelo."

Jason's last name caught his attention, since he knew that was Thalia's last name too, but he decided not to even bother asking if there was any relation. If Thalia had a full blooded brother then people would have known about it. Luke and Kronos would have known about it, since once upon a time, Luke and Thalia had been BFFs, living on the streets together, on the run. Kronos would have torn the world apart to find Thalia's brother, if she'd had one, either to use him as leverage against her, or to use him as a potential child of the prophecy. Ergo, chances that Jason was related to Thalia were so small that Nico didn't think they were worth considering.

"Nice to meet you officially, Nico," said Jason, holding out his hand.

Nico shook it. "You too, I guess."

"We should get out of sight of the school, and quickly," said Jason.

Nico agreed and started walking. Normally he would have shadow traveled himself and whoever his companion was, even though it was only a few minute walk. He'd gotten good enough at shadow traveling that when he was at full strength, he could take a passenger along without getting too tired. But he didn't know this Jason guy and didn't want to do anything that would make himself vulnerable in front of him . . . even though he believed Jason was a good guy.

During their previous meeting, he and Zia had run into Jason and some of Jason's friends at a grocery store in San Francisco. It was one of the rare occasions where Nico and Zia ended up teamed up without Sadie or Carter there to keep an eye on them, because they all knew Nico and Zia had some . . . well, not really problems, but odd circumstances. Since Zia had been briefly inhabited by Nephthys, she'd inherited some of her personality traits, including a deep love of, and a great deal of protectiveness for Nephthys's son Anubis, who was still being hosted by Nico. That love and protectiveness went through a weird transference process and got combined with Zia's own fiery and protective nature and resulted in her turning into a pyromaniac mother-bear whenever Nico was threatened. He couldn't imagine she would react well to hearing what he'd gotten himself into now, but that would be another problem for another day.

But they had been grocery shopping in San Francisco, where no demigod wanted to be, ever, thanks to the Mountain of Monsters and Other Very Bad Things. The city was infested with monsters, and all the kids of Camp Half-Blood were warned to stay away from the Bay Area whenever possible. Though, when Nico thought about it, he didn't think it was that much worse than New York, as far as the monster problem went. But while Nico and Zia were there shopping for food, they'd run into a group of demigods in purple shirts, which included Jason. Their first meeting hadn't started off well. Two of Jason's friends came over and tried hitting on Zia and Nico had gotten mad because they were being disrespectful. Then one of them had made a movement that Nico interpreted as threatening, and a small scuffle broke out. One that Zia got in on. Jason came over to call off his friends, and Nico had ended up throwing one of them at him, but Jason had been a good sport about it. He and his friends had left the supermarket, but were waiting for Nico and Zia in the parkinglot when they left. At first Nico thought they wanted a fight, but they'd surprised him. The two jerks who'd tried to harass Zia actually apologized for it. Only because Jason stood by and made them, but that had been a nice gesture on Jason's part. Then they'd gotten attacked by a pack of hellhounds. They'd been tempting fate, having that many demigods together in one place. Doubly so since Nico now realized how powerful Jason was, and since he himself was a son of Hades, their being together in San Francisco meant it was pretty much inevitable they'd attract some kind of monster. And yeah, the hellhounds were creatures of Hades, so Nico might have been able to bend their will to his own if he put enough effort into it, but that probably would have left him exhausted, and being exhausted in San Francisco was a death wish. It had been easier just to turn the lot of them into dust. Which they had done.

Nico had dusted one hound, Zia another, and Jason and his friends had gotten the other two, though it had to be said that Zia had lit one of theirs on fire at least a full minute before they got to it. So if you looked at it as a contest, Nico and Zia definitely won. But Nico had to admit, Jason's team had impressed him with their skills and organization. It was almost like they were some sort of military unit that had drilled together for years.

_Wait a second . . ._ Nico almost stumbled as something occurred to him.

_Yes,_ Anubis told him. _You're right._

_What? You mean they . . . the camp they were talking about . . . those guys . . . Jason is -_

_A Roman demigod,_ said Anubis.

_You mean you knew back then and you didn't tell me? _demanded Nico.

_Your gods separated their Roman and Greek children for good reasons, Nico,_ said Anubis. _You have no idea how much bloodshed there's been between your camp and his._

_So . . . I shouldn't trust him, is what you're telling me? Just because he's Roman?_

_That is not what I'm saying. I'm saying you should be wary and not let him know about your camp, where you're from, or any of your friends. Because it's better to be safe than sorry in cases like these. Not because I think all Romans are scum. Racism is stupid. Stereotypes too. People should be judged for who they are and what they've done. Not for where they're from or what their race or country has done._

Nico smiled, glad that Anubis saw things his way. _Agreed. Though our definitions of judging people are probably a little different, you know. I'm not going to be tearing out anyone's heart and weighing it against a feather, like you do. I'm just going to be, you know, taking stock of him as a person. And so far I think he's a decent sort of guy._

If Anubis was physically present there, he would swatted Nico upside the head. _You know that was not the sort of judging I was talking about._

_Yeah. I know._ Nico smirked. Then something occurred to him, something that was both potentially wonderful and horrible, that melted that smirk off his face. _Do you know if -_

_Nico, no. No good will come of asking that,_ said Anubis quickly.

_You don't know that._

_I do. Every time the Greek and Roman demigods come in contact with each other, you end up killing each other. _

_Not every time!_ shouted Nico. _We fought side by side in San Francisco, me and Jason and his friends. We didn't kill each other then!_

_You didn't know -_

_I wouldn't have cared even if I did! You know I could have shadow traveled Zia and myself away from danger. But I didn't. And I wouldn't have, even if I'd known they were Romans. Because I am not a jerk like that! And I don't think they are either. At least not Jason and his girlfriend, and most of the others. Percy wouldn't have left them either. Nor Annabeth. Nor Thalia. _

_Nico -_

_So why shouldn't I ask? I want to know! s_creamed Nico inside his own mind. _If I have another sister or a brother that my father sired while in his Roman form then I want to know! I need to know! So don't tell me not to ask! Don't you dare try to stop me from asking! It's my family! And if there's ever anything that they need, I'm going to be there for them. I'm old enough and strong enough that I can actually be of help to them now if they get in trouble. I'm not the weak, pathetic little kid I used to be._

He felt Anubis give a resigned sigh in his mind. _I won't try to stop you, Nico. But be careful._

Nico started to nod, then stopped himself since Jason might be watching and he didn't want to have to explain that to the Roman. _I will be. And . . . sorry for yelling._

_Don't be. I know what family means to you._

They reached the McDonald's without incident, ordered some food, waited for their order to be filled, then sat down at a table at the far end of the restaurant where they were less likely to be overheard.

"So . . . do you go to Heart of Liberty School?" asked Jason once they sat down.

Nico nodded. "As of this morning. And I take it you don't?"

Jason shook his head. "Why are you there? Did your family enroll you?"

It was Nico's turn to shake his head. "I enrolled myself."

Jason frowned. "You couldn't have enrolled yourself. You're like nine -"

"I'm thirteen, I'll have you know."

"That's still not old enough to enroll yourself," said Jason. "And manipulating the Mist doesn't work with these guys, believe me, I know."

"I paid a bum to pretend to be my step father. Then I passed their admissions test. What's your interest in that school?" asked Nico.

Jason drummed his fingers on the table, ignoring his Big Mac and fries. "I don't know if you know this or not, but . . . there have been a number of demigods who've attended that school and . . . well . . ."

"Gone a little crazy?" asked Nico.

"Yeah." Jason looked a bit surprised. "You knew?"

Nico nodded.

"Yet you enrolled yourself there? Why?"

"The same reason you were poking around in the bushes, I think," said Nico. "To find out what's going on."

"But that's dangerous," said Jason. "You know what could happen to you."

"Probably the same thing that could happen to you, if they caught you," said Nico. "But I think we both want the same thing: for this crap to stop. Am I right?"

Jason looked wary. "I do want it to stop. But . . . do you even know what you've gotten yourself into?"

"It's a learning experience," said Nico in between bites of his fries.

"It's not a joke of a game, Nico," said Jason.

"I know it's not," said Nico. "I know that kids, that demigods, are being hurt there somehow. Their minds are getting messed up. I want it to stop."

Jason still looked doubtful. "But . . . you're all alone, aren't you?"

Nico shook his head. "I have friends."

"But they're not on hand to back you up, are they?" asked Jason.

"They'll be there when I need them," said Nico.

"But they're not, you know, laying in wait for your signal?" persisted Jason.

Nico scowled. "No. But they'll be there when I need them."

"You don't know that," said Jason. "Not if they're not specifically waiting for your word, and your word alone."

"They're my friends," said Nico. "I have ways to contact them -"

"You do know what happens when demigods use cell phones, don't you?" asked Jason. "Or even walkie talkies?"

"Yes, I'm well aware," said Nico. "And before you say anything about it, I've already discovered that I can't IM anyone from inside the school."

Jason looked confused. "Why would you think instant messaging someone for help would be a good idea to begin with?"

Nico blinked at him. "I meant Iris Message, not instant message."

"Iris Message?"

_Do Romans not have Iris Messages?_ asked Nico.

_I guess not._

"Well, they don't work in the school, so never mind them right now," said Nico. "Just believe me when I say I have other ways to contact my friends. We all have a few tricks up our sleeves. I have more than most."

Jason looked worried. "Nico . . . I don't know what all happens in there, but I'm willing to bet you don't either. But I can tell you that I have had operatives in there. Trained soldiers from Camp Jupiter, from my own cohort. Powerful demigods who thought they were prepared to face whatever they have in there. It didn't go well for any of them. One of them is missing altogether. The other went mad from whatever they did to him. And you . . . you don't even have any training. You -"

"I have training," Nico assured him.

"No, you don't," said Jason. "You've never been to camp. I can tell that just by looking at you. You feel pretty powerful, now that I know what to look for, but raw power is no replacement for training -"

"I train with the dead," said Nico, unable to keep a cool smile from curling his lips.

That got Jason off his soap box. "Wh-what?"

"I train with the dead," repeated Nico. "I'm the son of . . . Pluto. Still want me at your camp?"

Jason stared at him with a look Nico couldn't read. It was like his disbelief was fighting with excitement and happiness. "Another son of one of the Eldest Three."

"Another?" asked Nico, only half able to believe what he'd just heard.

Jason nodded. "I didn't mention earlier. I'm the son of Jupiter."

Nico nearly choked on his Happy Meal. "Son . . . Jupiter . . ."

_Jupiter is Zeus, right?_ he asked Anubis.

_Yes._

_So . . . I'm guessing that last Great Prophecy was for Greeks only? _

_I guess,_ said Anubis. _I'm no expert on Greek or Roman anything._

_But wait . . . his last name . . . could he be -_

_It is possible, _said Anubis, _but I would hold off on asking until you've finished this task. We cannot afford anymore distractions or problems right now, Nico. We can barely afford this one. Even as we speak, Sadie, Carter, and the rest of Brooklyn House are trying to find where Apophis intends to strike next._

_You're right,_ said Nico, though reluctantly. If Thalia and Jason were related somehow and didn't know it . . . or if they did know it but had somehow been separated, Nico didn't want to be party to keeping them apart. But Anubis was right. They had too many problems to deal with now as it was. Demigods, apparently both Greek and Roman, being driven mad by this school . . . and then Apophis getting ready to try throwing the whole world into chaos. Nico couldn't risk doing something that could plunge the Greeks and Romans into a civil war now.

He would have liked to try to believe that it was a coincidence that Thalia and Jason both had the last name Grace . . . but he knew it wasn't. He really had believed that Jason having the last name Grace was a coincidence before, but the moment he heard Jason was a son of Jupiter he knew he'd been wrong.

"Nico," Jason was saying earnestly, when Nico finally tuned back in to what he was saying, "I won't lie to you. There would be many opposed to your presence at Camp Jupiter. But I promise you I would not be among them. Nor would any in my cohort. There is a place for you there. A place where you could belong."

Nico shook his head and started to speak, but Jason cut him off.

"We're cousins, you and I. And yes, I know that the gods don't have DNA, so technically, we're not cousins, but at the same time, yes, we are. I think it's a little different for children of the Eldest Three. The only ones who can really understand the burden of our power are other children of the -"

"Do you know many others?" asked Nico. If this Camp Jupiter place had a lot of children of the Big Three, or Eldest Three, or whatever crazy term the Romans used for them, Camp Half-Blood could be in trouble if it came to blows. But if they had any Children of Pluto, Nico swore he'd do whatever it took to make sure that never happened. He'd rather die than raise a weapon against his sister. Or his brother.

"As far as I know, you and I are the only two in this generation," said Jason. Then his expression darkened. "Except maybe . . . no . . . That's not . . . not relevant. You and I are the only two from this generation still alive."

Nico's chest tightened, almost violently.

_Nico . . ._ said Anubis in a warning tone.

_How can I not tell him, Anubis? He thinks Thalia's dead! I can't -_

_There is more at stake than Jason and Thalia's sibling relationship here, Nico,_ said Anubis. _You know this._

_I know, but . . ._

_There will be time to tell them later. When there is not so much at stake. Think. If you were in their position, knowing how much was at stake, would you still want to be told about your sibling?_

_Yes,_ answered Nico without hesitation.

Anubis gave a mental sigh. _But you would understand why the information was withheld. _

_Yes,_ admitted Nico reluctantly. _I wouldn't like it . . . but I'd understand._ To Jason he said, "I appreciate the offer, Jason, but I can't take you up on it. Not now, anyway. My circumstances . . . I've got a lot of obligations right now. I have a number of friends who need help with a number of different things. Including the ones I'm infiltrating this school for."

Jason nodded after hearing this. "I understand. And in fairness, I couldn't ask you to abandon your obligations. That said, there shouldn't be any reason why we can't work together to find out what's going on in Heart of Liberty, should there?"

"No," agreed Nico. "There shouldn't."

_Nico,_ said Anubis warningly.

_What?_

_This is potentially very dangerous._

_And it's also potentially the first step to uniting the Greek and Roman demigods, _said Nico.

_What makes you think that's a good thing?_ asked Anubis.

_The fact that I'm going to _make_ it a good thing, _returned Nico. _And look at it this way: it's going to happen anyway. Because as soon as we take down the punks driving demigods mad here, and shove Apophis's new plan down his stupid snakey throat, I'm IM-ing Thalia and telling her about this. And then she's going to charge off and find Jason, possibly dragging the rest of the Hunters, Annabeth, Percy, and me along with her, and whatever is going to happen will happen. But if Jason and I can work together here and now, then we'll have a solid foundation to build off of. _

_Be careful, Nico,_ cautioned Anubis. _Be very careful. Because you know that this has the potential to blow up in your face._

_Not as much as Thalia would blow up in my face if she ever found out that I knew about Jason but didn't do a thing to help reunite her with him,_ said Nico.

_True. But still. Be careful._

* * *

AN: Thank you everyone who reviewed :) I read all reviews, and take into account what you guys say, even if can't always grant your requests.

To clarify a few things that people asked, or have caused a bit of confusion, Nico asked Will Solace if Katniss was his sister as a joke. I think most people know she's the main character of _The Hunger Games_, and she's an excellent shot with a bow and arrow, and a beautiful singer, so Nico thought it would make sense if she was a daughter of Apollo. But she doesn't exist in this AU. He was just joking around. And neither Loki nor the tesseract cube thing will be featured in this AU either, so the blue eyes aren't caused by tesseract possession, I promise.

Special thanks to MyNameIsAwesome who suggested the lines that Nico and Jason used when they recognized each other.

And it's been a long time since I've given any recommendations, even though a lot of people have given good recommendations of books, manga, and anime to me, so here's my new one: an anime called Sword Art Online. It's a new anime so it hasn't been officially translated into English yet, but there are fansubs of it available. It's set in the year 2022, and the first complete virtual reality online roleplaying game has just been released. The players use these helmets called Nerve Gear that intercept all the signals that their brain gives for movements, so they make those movements in the VR world rather than the real world. But on the day that the game starts, the creator of the Sword Art Online game disables the Log Out feature and makes it so that any attempt to remove the helmets from the players from the outside world will microwave the player's brain. Likewise, if a player's health points drop to 0 their brain will be microwaved as well. He makes this announcement to all of the players, and lets them know that the only way for them to be released is if one of them manages to beat the game and kill the final boss.

As you can probably imagine, the players don't take this too well, but the fact remains that they are stuck in the game, and some of them come to accept this and try to level their characters up and advance. 2000 players end up dying in the very first month. The ones who are left have numerous problems to face: powerful monsters that are capable of killing them, rivalries between the game's beta testers, who used their prior knowledge to secure the most resources, and the new players, player killers who band together and murder other players, and the impossible task of trying to organize a bunch of people you met on the internet, to name a few. There are only a few episodes out so far, but so far it's really, really good. So that's my new recommendation for anyone who likes anime.


	6. Chapter 6

6

Nico took Anubis's advice to heart and proceeded carefully. Or at least as carefully as he could. When he spoke to Percy later that night he made no mention of Jason Grace. And he left him out of his official report to Chiron the next night, when he shadow traveled back to Camp Half-Blood to report what he'd found out so far. He let them know the rumors about the Blue Ward, and how none of the lights in the school were strong enough to make a rainbow and get an Iris Message through, but didn't let them know that they weren't the only ones looking into the school and trying to figure out what was driving half bloods crazy.

The night after that, he went to Brooklyn House. Nothing of particular interest had happened at the Heart of Liberty Prison (which was what Nico thought the school really should be called) or else he would have gone back to camp to report it, or at least to Percy. But Nico hadn't noticed anything new that was strange, and hadn't gotten himself moved to the Blue Ward yet. He knew he had to try to make that happen soon, but not too soon, or else whoever was running the prison might realize he was there to spy on them and bring them down.

So he went to check in with Sadie and Carter, bracing himself for Sadie's wrath as he shadow traveled onto the balcony. With all the wards on the place, that was the easiest thing to do. He could have brought himself directly into the mansion, and had done it before, but it took more energy to do that than it was worth.

The other residents of Brooklyn House greeted Nico warmly when they saw him as he made his way through the mansion, and Nico paused to exchange a few words with each of them. Felix, Alyssa, and Walt he talked with a bit longer. Felix chattered happily and trailed after Nico, asking all kinds of questions. Did he know how mad Sadie was at him? Was that demigod really just mad about the Mythomagic booster packs' release date? How was Percy? Had Percy killed anything lately? Was Nico finished with whatever he was doing? How long would it take him to finish?

Jaz took pity on Nico when he saw him trying to get away from the younger boy, and enlisted Felix in helping her with something magic and complicated that Nico couldn't even begin to understand even when Anubis tried to explain it to him.

He ran into Walt in the hallway and the two exchanged a few tense words. Nico was actually left out of that conversation though. It was Anubis who needed to talk to Walt about several plans they were making for the future. Plans that involved Walt's rapidly approaching demise. If Walt was annoyed to find that Anubis had let Nico in on the secret, he didn't show it, but then he probably knew that Anubis and Nico had few secrets that the other couldn't discover if they pried hard enough.

Alyssa was the last one he ran into before he found the Kanes. He found her carrying a huge block of clay wrapped in plastic and immediately moved to help her.

"Let me get that for you," he said as soon as he saw her and what she was doing. He quickly relieved her of her burden and was rewarded with a warm smile.

"Thanks," Alyssa told him. "That was heavy."

"I – uh – yeah," stuttered Nico, not sure what the best way to respond to that was. If he agreed, he might look like a wuss, but if he claimed that it wasn't heavy, it might sound like he was demeaning her. "Uh, I mean, where are we taking this?"

"One of the rooms downstairs," said Alyssa. "I commandeered it for Path of Geb studies."

"Oh?"

"But since almost no one else has any interest in those, it's pretty much my personal pottery workshop for now," said Alyssa as she fell in step beside him.

"Oh. That's cool. That you have your own workshop I mean, not that no one else likes your path. Because Geb is cool," said Nico, stumbling over his own words again. "Earth powers are cool."

"You have some yourself, if I remember right," said Alyssa.

"Huh?"

"When we had to defend Brooklyn House a couple months back," Alyssa reminded him. "You used your power over stone to turn that sphinx statue into dust, so we could turn that water magician into mud."

"Oh, yeah," said Nico. "I remember now. You helped too. That was fun."

"Good times," agreed Alyssa.

He helped her get the clay down to her work-room and set it down on a wooden table that had been covered with a tarp, almost tripping over another tarp on the floor as he went.

"Sorry," apologized Alyssa, grabbing onto his arm even though he'd found his balance, then kneeling down to smooth the tarp flat. "I keep everything covered to make the least amount of mess possible, but since it's just me in here I don't pay as much attention as I could to things that could trip people up. Sorry."

"It's fine," said Nico. He looked around the workshop. Alyssa had a potter's wheel, a kiln to fire her clay, and a bunch of shelves half of which were protected by multiple sheets of plastic. The other half seemed to be for displaying final products. A bunch of shabti and other trinkets and tools for magic lined those shelves, along with clay pots, vases, and storage jars.

"So . . . I've been meaning to ask," said Alyssa. "Do you have other earth powers too?"

"Um, not really," said Nico. "Most of my powers deal with . . . you know, death. But since my father's Lord of the Underworld as well as Lord of the Dead, I have some geomancy powers. Mainly ones that deal with stones and rocks. My father's told me tales of some of my siblings whose powers dealt with the other end of his power spectrum. He's also a god of wealth and all that lies under the earth, so gems, precious metals and the like. So I guess they were like Magneto, only just with precious metals and stones. But I don't have those powers."

"Oh." Alyssa looked slightly disappointed and Nico felt panic that he couldn't explain rising in his chest.

"If there was some treasure you wanted I could try to get it for you," he said quickly. "They might not be particularly in my power sphere, but I'm good at finding things. And getting past alarms and stuff. I could shadow travel straight into the Smithsonian and snatch the Hope Diamond for you if that's what you wanted."

"No, no, nothing like that," said Alyssa quickly. "I just thought if you had more earth powers, that would be something else we had in common. Give us something to talk about . . . and you could come down here and, you know, throw pots with me sometime . . ."

"Oh." Nico suddenly felt very stupid. What had he been thinking, offering to go steal diamonds for her? He didn't want to imagine what she must be thinking of him at the moment. Then it dawned on him that she had kinda, sorta invited him to hang out with her sometime and his face flushed. _"Oh._ Well, uh . . . I've been pretty busy lately and will probably be for awhile -"

"No, no, I understand," said Alyssa, looking away, her face red. Gods, that couldn't be good. Was she that furious with him? "I knew you were busy, I -"

"No, no, what I meant was when things settle down a little, that would be fun," said Nico quickly. "What you said earlier. Throwing pots or whatever else you do with clay. I could try it. I'd like to try it."

That brought a smile to Alyssa's face, and Nico felt like he'd accomplished something good, but before either of them could speak again, they were interrupted by someone coughing at the door.

Not just someone.

Sadie.

And she didn't look happy.

In fact, she looked pissed.

Nico contemplated shadow traveling away, but decided against it. Best to face the music now. Otherwise, Sadie would be twice as mad next time.

"Sorry, am I interrupting something?" asked Sadie, acid in her tone.

"No," Alyssa and Nico said at the same time.

"Really? Because, you know, I would have thought, given what we talked about before you last departed Nico, that you'd come see me first as soon as you got back again, especially after deciding to do what you're doing now," said Sadie. "But I find you here. In . . . whatever this room is. Talking about stealing the Hope Diamond and making pottery. So I figure, this must be really important, right?"

"I – uh -"

"Sorry, Sadie," said Alyssa quickly. "Nico was on his way to see you, but I kind of stole him away. He was helping me move that big block of clay." She pointed.

"I see," said Sadie. "You're finished now, Nico?"

"Um, yeah."

"Good. Then let's talk."

Alyssa was backing away uncertainly. "I guess I'll . . . let you two talk." She made a hasty exit, but cast a look back at Nico. Once she was gone, Sadie kicked the door shut behind her.

"So," said Sadie, glaring at Nico.

"Ummm . . . sorry?" asked Nico.

Sadie's eyes narrowed even more. "What exactly are you apologizing to me about, Nico?"

Nico took a deep breath. "Doing exactly what you were afraid I would have to do. Going on an undercover assignment for Camp. But I had to, Sadie. Someone's making demigods go crazy, and they're doing it deliberately. Camp Half-Blood's tried to place other agents in the school I'm at now, but they haven't managed to get a single one admitted."

"Can't they use that Mist thing?" demanded Sadie.

"It doesn't work," Nico told her. "Not on the people at that school who decide if kids get in or not. They need me there, Sadie."

"We need you here."

Nico shook his head. "You don't. We've been over this already, Sadie. I'm the worst magician in Brooklyn House."

"Not when you let Anubis cast the spells," Sadie reminded him.

"But the more we do that, the better chance there is someone will figure out that I'm hosting Anubis," said Nico. "Besides, I don't like giving up control so much -"

"I'm sorry to ask you to go through a little discomfort to help us," snapped Sadie.

Nico bristled. "That's not fair! Besides, I don't see you letting Isis shack up with you to help out the cause!"

"That's completely different! If I invite her in, she's going to be here to stay!"

"And Anubis is already here to stay for the foreseeable future!"

"So what's the problem?" asked Sadie.

"The problem is that I'm still me, and I want to stay that way," said Nico angrily. "This is my body. I don't like being a prisoner in it. Well, a passenger. Anubis won't take control and not give it back, but I still want to be the one in control as much as possible. But even if that wasn't the case, there's still the whole thing about how people are going to figure out what I am. And when that happens, there's going to be a war. And that war's probably going to lead to the end of the world And I think we've got enough on our plates without having to try to avert that apocalypse as well as the current one, don't you?"

"We can use you here for things other than magic," said Sadie. "You're out best melee fighter."

"_Bast_ is your best melee fighter," said Nico.

"But you give her a run for her money and don't have the limitations she does," said Sadie. "And we need you for things other than combat too. Like your brain."

"What?" Nico was taken back by that comment.

"You're smart," Sadie told him. "You're good at figuring stuff out."

Nico shook his head. "Sadie . . . I'm not sure how you've failed to notice this, but I'm an idiot."

"No, you're not," said Sadie vehemently.

"Yeah, I am," said Nico. "And it's OK, you don't have to pretend otherwise. I know I'm stupid -"

"You're not stupid!" snapped Sadie.

"Sorry, but yeah, I am," said Nico.

"You're not."

"It's not exactly a secret, or something I can hide," said Nico. "Remember how we fooled my father, back when this whole mess started? The plan only worked because he knows how stupid I am -"

"You're not stupid," insisted Sadie. "If you were stupid could you have figured that plan out in the first place?"

Nico shrugged. "I got lucky."

"And could you have figured out who the murderer was when Carter and I accidentally paid a visit to your camp?" asked Sadie.

"Someone else would have figured it out pretty soon -"

"But you were the first one to figure it out," said Sadie. "A hundred demigods, a centaur, and two magicians, but the first one to figure it out was you."

"Well, death's kind of my area of expertise, so I had an advantage."

"And that thing with the scroll that you solved just the other day?" continued Sadie.

"Dumb luck."

"No, it wasn't," said Sadie. "Nico, you have a gift. You can figure things out that leave everyone else stumped. And you can figure out ways to get out of impossible situations. Like how to fool Hades and avert a war, or how to make Percy nearly invincible so he could fight on equal ground with Kronos's host. You figured out the pattern to Apophis's attacks. Without you, we'd still be lost. Now, because of you, we're on the right track to figuring out where he'll strike next. We need you, Nico."

"When you need me, I'll be there," said Nico. "But right now Camp Half-Blood needs me."

"Nico -"

"I didn't come back here to argue about this again," said Nico. "I came to check in with you guys, let you know what was going on, and make sure you had no immediate need for me. So . . . have you figured out where Apophis is attacking next?"

"No," said Sadie reluctantly.

"Then you don't have an immediate need for me," said Nico, "So I'll be staying at the school for now."

"That sounds fair enough," said Carter from the doorway. He gave Sadie an annoyed look. "You could have gotten me before you two started talking. I had to hear Nico was back from the others, then had to check every room until I found you two."

"Sorry," said Sadie, but she didn't look contrite.

"So, what's going on at this school, Nico?"

Nico explained to them the situation at the school, letting them know everything he'd learned, including the rumors about the Blue Ward that weren't in any way verified. He noticed Sadie's expression grow troubled when he got to the part about the rumors of peoples' eyes being changed to blue after they went to the Blue Ward.

"That girl Maya had blue eyes, if I remember right," said Carter.

"I think she did too," said Nico. "But I think she's a daughter of Hermes, so that's natural for her."

"But her eyes weren't that overly-bright disturbing blue color that Pierre's eyes were," said Sadie.

"Piers," corrected Nico. "But yeah, you're right."

"Are eyes that color natural for children of . . . whoever?" asked Carter.

"Piers was a son of Kratos," said Nico, "but he's the first one I've ever met."

"Do you know how long Maya was at that school, as opposed to how long Kratos was?" asked Sadie.

"No," said Nico, "but I can try to find out."

"I don't think you should," said Sadie. "I think that place is too dangerous, Nico."

"I can't just walk away. Not when I know they're hurting people and I can stop it."

"You could get killed trying to stop it," said Sadie darkly. "Or worse."

"You mean get driven crazy myself? Not likely." Nico smirked. "If I miss a check in, Percy will be beating down their door, sword in hand. Of course, it'll never get to that, because if I get in trouble, Anubis will come get you guys. Not that I plan to get in trouble."

Sadie still looked troubled. "I've got a feeling that things are about to get serious soon, Nico," she said. "And I've got a feeling that you're in more danger from that place than you think."

Her tone worried Nico more than her words, because he could tell that she was genuinely dreading something. What he couldn't tell, is if that dread was brought on by a premonition or just by nerves. He hoped it was the later. Sadie was an amazing girl, spunky and brave and completely gorgeous . . . even though Nico didn't know if it was him who thought of her like that or Anubis . . . but she was still just a teenage girl. All kids, and adults too, sometimes worried about things they didn't need to. Nico really hoped this was one of those times.

"We're all in danger," Nico reminded the Kanes. "We live dangerous lives. And it sucks, but it's not going to change anytime soon. All we can really do is be as careful as we can, and try to eliminate as many dangers as we can, which is what I'm doing. And when you need me to help eliminate the biggest danger . . . well, the biggest current danger that is, I'll be there to help you."

Sadie looked at him stubbornly. "We could still use your help preparing."

"As soon as I finish this assignment," promised Nico. "I'll devote all my time to helping you figure out a way to kill the worm."

Sadie and Carter filled in Nico on their search for what would be Apophis's next target, as well as what was going on with the House of Life freaks (who were their allies now, and weren't supposed to be referred to as freaks anymore, or so Amos said), what their spies were reporting about the rebels, and what preparations Brooklyn House had been making. Nico listened carefully and filed the details away in his mind. He was conscious of Anubis listening in on their conversation, but the death god had no words to contribute to the briefing. He did however, Nico noticed, keep turning his head toward Sadie, even when Carter was the one talking, and Nico noticed his eyes falling . . . well, below Sadie's face. As soon as he realized this, he telepathed his annoyance to Anubis, and jerked his gaze away from Sadie completely, hoping that he wasn't blushing, and that neither of the Kanes had noticed.

Someday soon, Nico was going to have to figure out what his feelings really were about Sadie, and how much they were being effected by Anubis's feelings. But for now, he had bigger things to worry about.

Once they were finished filling Nico in, Nico brought up the other reason why he'd made the trip to Brooklyn House that night. He pulled out a piece of notebook paper, rolled up like a scroll and held it so that Sadie and Carter could see it.

"I have one more thing I need to tell you both about before I go," said Nico. "Well, kind of tell you about . . . in a way. Okay, not really tell you about, but -"

"Spit it out, Death Boy," said Sadie.

"Sadie," said Carter to shush her.

"What? None of us are getting any younger here."

Nico decided to continue before an argument could break out. "First, I just want to say that even though I'm being vague with you about this, it's not because I don't trust you. If I didn't trust you, I wouldn't be leaving this with you. I'm just being vague because trying to explain the whole thing to you could take an hour or more, and none of us has that kind of time right now."

"Alright," said Carter. "We understand."

"Okay, good," said Nico. "I'm going to be leaving this with you. It's . . . well, I recently found out something important . . . well, something that might be very important to one of my kind-of friends."

"Who?" demanded Sadie.

"It doesn't matter," said Carter.

"I want to know," argued Sadie. "Is it a girl?"

Nico sighed. "Yes. It's a girl."

"You want me to hang onto your love letter for her, is that it?"

"No!" snapped Nico. "I – it – look, it just – "

"Well what is it then?"

"He doesn't need to tell us," said Carter, looking at Sadie annoyed. "He's entrusting us with something. Do you know how bad you look questioning him so much about it?"

Nico heaved another sigh. "Okay, I guess I'm going to have to explain a little bit, because I get the feeling this will take longer if I don't. The person is Thalia. The leader of the Hunters of Artemis. Remember them? The manhating archer who pinned me to a tree? Well, I found out something that might be very important to her, but it's a . . . sensitive issue. And it's nothing scandalous that could get her in trouble or anything, but it is a private, family related matter, so I'm not going to tell you what it is right now. Not when I haven't even told her yet, because that would feel wrong."

"Alright," said Carter. "And you need us to hang onto that scroll . . . and deliver it to her if something happens to you?"

"Not quite," said Nico. "If something happens to me, I want you to get Percy and read to him what's written on this. I wrote it in hieroglyphics, because it's . . . well, I don't want the wrong demigod getting ahold of it. So just, if something happens to me, make sure Percy knows what this scroll says. He can decide how to proceed from there."

"Alright," said Carter again, and accepted the scroll.

"But nothing better happen to you," said Sadie.

"I'm not planning on it," said Nico. "But then, no one ever plans on bad things happening to them. And this is really important, so I wanted to make sure that if something happened to me, this information would still get to Thalia."

"Then why not have us find her and give it directly to her?"

"There's an answer, but it's really complicated, plus you'd have a hard time finding Thalia to begin with," said Nico. "Whereas you have Percy's home phone number, so he's much easier for you to get ahold of."

Sadie still looked like she felt like being difficult. "And what if something happens to all three -"

"All three of us?" asked Nico. "Then the world's probably going to end, so I figure that news won't matter."

* * *

Jason had mixed feelings about using Nico as an undercover agent.

On the one hand, it wasn't like Nico had infiltrated that school specifically for him. But on the other, Jason knew that whatever was going on in that school was as dangerous to demigods as any monster and Nico didn't even have real backup. Not the kind that a soldier of the legion would have had . . . but having backup on hand hadn't done any good to the two demigods Jason had managed to place in the school.

It was a bad situation no matter how he looked at it, and it was made worse by the fact that there would be no more help coming from camp, thanks to Octavian interpreting his auguries as he saw fit. In a way, Nico was almost like a godsend. He couldn't place another camper in the school undercover . . . but did that make it right to let some random boy with no formal military training risk his life in their stead?

Nico had certainly seemed like he believed he was up for any task. Jason recognized shades of himself in the younger boy; the cockiness that was often brought on by having awesome, dangerous powers, the cool confidence that he could do what needed to be done, and the solemn determination to do the right thing. Jason found himself murmuring prayers to his father to safeguard his new friend.

He kept watch over the school as best that he could, not that it really amounted to much. All he could really do was keep track of who came and who went. It was boring work, for the most part, and he wished he had a partner there with him to keep him company, and take the surveillance in turns, but officially, Jason wasn't supposed to be there at all. It wasn't the first time he'd gone against Octavian's stupid auguries, and unless he died sometime in the near future, it wouldn't be the last either, he knew. He knew that as praetor, he should be frowning on any sort of exploitation of the system, but as praetor he also knew how to exploit the system best. Kind of like King Leonidas from _300_. Actually, exactly like Leonidas from _300_. And that comparison was made all the better by the fact that the dude was Greek, and Octavian had an irrational hatred of all things Greek.

Jason, on the other hand, held no such prejudices. Yes, he knew what they'd done to the Trojans a long, long, long, long, long time ago, but he didn't see why that should have anything to do with the current country Greece, or any demigods who believed they were Greek in the present day. He'd read a lot of history. Military history and general world history. He saw how screwed up things got when people and countries held grudges over things long past. It snowballed and just got worse, and worse. If there were Greek demigods still out there (and Jason had his own reasons for believing that there were) as long as they weren't hurting anything, Jason didn't see any reason to seek them out and try to kill them all, like Octavian seemed to want to. So Jason had taken great pleasure over the years in annoying the carnival fortuneteller wannabe by arguing against Octavian's fanatical views with cool, hard logic . . . and by taking a little too much pleasure whenever any sort of Greek action movie came out, dragging his friends into San Francisco to see it multiple times, and learning the lines and quoting them in front of Octavian. Octavian had gotten so sick of him and Bobby reenacting Tristan McLean's death scene from _King of Sparta _during war games, he'd actually lost it and tried to seriously strangle Jason once. That had been funny.

It had occurred to Jason that Nico might not be exactly who or what he claimed to be. Not that Jason was really suspicious of him, or thought he was lying when he said he was a son of Pluto. Because, for one thing, lying about being a child of Pluto seemed like a good way to earn yourself a spot in Tartarus. For another, Nico radiated a cold, morose aura that reminded Jason of a crypt or a graveyard. No, Nico was definitely a child of the Underworld. Jason didn't even suspect him of being Greek. That would have just been reaching. But he remembered the girl who Nico had been with the last time they ran into each other. Zia, Nico had called her. He'd thought her powers were extremely weird when they met. Sorcery wasn't unheard of to the Romans at all, but Zia's style and flare had seemed, well, off. Then, weeks later, the veterans who instructed them in book learning had begun teaching them about something new that they'd only added to their curriculum that year. The House of Life had been added to their list of potential enemies, and Jason had immediately remembered the girl who took to the air on the back of a giant vulture, and could summon pillars of flames and turn her staff into a snake. A few glances toward his friends who'd been on that excursion let him know they remembered too.

But none of them had ever said a word about it. They were all on the same page, and Jason was glad. Zia had done them no harm. In fact, she and her brother (or at least they'd thought Nico was her brother at the time) had helped them. Fought side by side with them. She'd done nothing to mark herself as an enemy, and so they would not act as though she might be one. Lawrence might have felt differently if he'd been able to remember that outing, but Nico had given him a concussion and he didn't seem to have any memory of that trip at all, which was just as well.

For awhile, Jason had assumed that Nico had probably been from the House of Life too. He'd only changed his mind about that when they met up again, after Nico caught him sneaking around outside the school. He hadn't paid much attention the first time they met, but now that he thought to, he could clearly sense Nico was a demigod. A strong demigod. So Jason wasn't quite sure why he'd been hanging around a girl from the House of Life. He guessed that it was possible that Nico could be part of the House of Life too. He didn't know of any rule that said gods couldn't have kids with magicians from the House of Life. It would make a weird kind of sense. But it was also possible that Nico and Zia might be part of some other organization altogether, or just be two loners who'd teamed up and stayed on the move together. Jason knew that there were demigods like that out there, and if there were demigods like that, why not Egyptian magicians like that too?

Honestly, he didn't really know what Nico di Angelo's story was, and he had no intentions of prying. He hoped that he'd be able to convince the younger boy to come back to camp with him, but if he couldn't, he wasn't going to force the kid. He got the feeling that would end badly for him.

It took him a long time to decide what to say in his report to Reyna. Not that it was going to be an official report or anything of the sort. It was more of an update to let her know how things were going on his unsanctioned mission which lacked the augury seal of approval.

_Dear Reyna, _(was how he started his letter)

_My vacation's going well. Even though I've only been here a few days, it's already turned out to be eventful. You remember that kid we ran into awhile back? The dark haired boy who had the really fiery sister? Well I met him again when I got here and I learned something interesting about him. We're actually distantly related. And by distantly, I mean we're parallel cousins. On our mortal side, obviously _(and there Reyna would know he was blatantly lying.)_ He's from the deep south, so he does things a bit differently, but all in all, he's a nice guy. _(Hopefully Reyna would interpret that correctly, and realize 'deep south' was code for 'the Underworld,' and not Atlantis, or Mississippi or something) _He lives in town so I'll be seeing a lot of him while I'm here. He actually just started a new school, and he's been telling me all about it, or at least all he's learned about it since he started going there. It was quite a coincidence running into him again, but I'm glad I did. He's a good kid. He's older than I first thought he was, so he's not as annoying as I was worried he'd be. _(In other words, "Don't kill me, Reyna, he's 13, not 8!") _Actually, he's really helpful. It's a shame we don't live closer together_ (Interpret this as: "I'm bringing him back if I can, and Fifth Cohort's got dibs on him!")_ but I'm going to enjoy spending time with him while I'm here. We'll be hanging out again tomorrow._

_I'll write again when I can. _(Namely, when he had something else to say) _Until then, take care of camp for me. Don't let the other cohorts be too mean to the Fifth while I'm gone._

_Sincerely,_

_Jason Grace_

_Son of Jupiter_

_Praetor of the Legion_

_Please mentally insert all the rest of my titles here because they take too long to write._

That last line would make Reyna scowl and shake her head at Jason's disregard for formalities, but Jason knew there would be a slight curl to her lips as she tried to stop herself from smiling at his antics. He wished that he could be there to see it, because Reyna was so cute when she was trying not to smile . . . but if he was there, he'd never have needed to write the letter to begin with.

He sealed the envelope, scrawled a barely legible return address onto it, and took more time writing the destination's address. He found a stamp for it, then set the completed letter aside, to be mailed in the morning, then got his binoculars and used them to peer out the apartment window, in the direction of the school.

He hadn't expected to see anything, and his expectations weren't let down . . . which was kind of a disappointment in and of itself, because this self-decided mission was extremely boring for the most part. He looked forward to tomorrow, when he was scheduled to meet with Nico again.

* * *

AN: Sorry for taking awhile to finish this chapter. School starting again made things hectic, then I had some problems writing Jason and keeping him in character. Or how I see his character when he has all his memories intact, anyway. And I thought it would be funny to make him a fan of Greek war movies, and to have him be a fan of Piper's father's movies. In the books it's been a few years since _King of Sparta_ was released, so it was a younger, less mature Jason who had theatrical aspirations, and who goaded Octavian into trying to strangle him. He had even more fun when _300_ came out.


	7. Chapter 7

7

"The kids in that school are scared," Nico told Jason upon their next meeting. "Unsettlingly so."

"Because of the Blue Ward?" asked Jason.

Nico nodded. "I haven't gotten into it yet. I tried to do some snooping around, but they've got advanced security measures."

"What sort of security measures?" asked Jason.

"Advanced ones."

Jason opened his mouth but Nico spoke again before he could.

"Just messing with you, I know what you meant," he said, smiling a bit evilly. He wasn't quite sure why he was so at ease with Jason. Maybe it was because Jason seemed to believe so deeply that they were kindred spirits, and not just cousins, even though they were, in the same DNA-less way that Nico was related to at least a third of Camp Half-Blood. Personally, Nico thought it was probably because Jason was so determined to be right about them being kindred spirits. Or maybe it was a combination of him wanting so badly to be right, and him actually being partly right. Jason and Nico had the scarily dangerous, but awesome powers thing in common, as well as the broken family thing. Nico didn't know Jason's full story, but sensed that it was complicated and full of trials, much as Nico's own had been. Nico suspected that given time, he and Jason could probably become pretty good friends. They'd have to get through the whole Greek-Roman/Greasers-Soc rivalry first, but since Jason (probably) had a sister on the Greek side, Nico didn't think he'd be too hung up on old rivalries.

"You know those high tech spy movies where they've got those grids of lasers or light beams that set off alarms if you touch one of the lasers?" said Nico. "It turns out that those actually really exist."

Jason looked impressed. "I thought those were only in movies."

"I did too," said Nico. "Until I actually saw the damn things."

"So you couldn't get past them," sighed Jason.

"What? No, I got past them," Nico told him.

"Huh? How?" asked Jason. "Are you a contortionist?"

Nico shook his head. "I used my powers. Son of Hades, remember? I mean Pluto," he corrected himself hastily.

He didn't miss the look of curious interest that crossed Jason's face at his slip, but Jason didn't mention it. "Your powers let you get past laser grids?"

"Yeah, I . . ." Nico hesitated, remembering that it wasn't a good idea to reveal all his powers to a Roman. He felt bad about it. Nico wasn't racist by any means. But he knew he should be wary of the Roman.

"Are you a contortionist?" asked Jason.

Nico shook his head and made a decision. "One of my powers is shadow travel. It lets me travel at the speed of darkness, as long as there's darkness to travel through. I sort of . . . I don't know, become a shadow when I do that, I guess."

"Wow." Jason looked genuinely impressed. "That sounds really useful. So can you travel long distances or just short ones?"

"Either," answered Nico. "I took a few accidental trips to China when I first started learning."

Jason laughed at that. "Awesome. I wish I could do something like that. All my powers are cool, but they're also really destructive and dangerous to the people around me. Except flying. That one's safe enough for bystanders."

"You can fly?" asked Nico, eyes wide.

Jason nodded. "Through wind manipulation. It's really fun."

"I flew once. I had to use wings though."

"Wings?"

"Daedalus's wings. Some of my friends and I found them in his workshop in the labyrinth, then had to use them to run for our lives. Or fly for our lives, as the case was."

"The labyrinth?" asked Jason. "You mean _the_ labyrinth?"

"Yes. Before we destroyed it."

Jason stood up so fast, he nearly knocked his chair down. If there'd been anyone else in the McDonalds they would have been staring at him, but thankfully, the two demigods were alone. "That was _you?"_

"Umm . . ." Nico belated realized that maybe he shouldn't have brought that up. "Sorry?"

"Don't be sorry," said Jason, a grin crossing his face. He seemed to realize that he was standing and sat back down, but his grin remained. "At camp, we spent months trying to find a way to destroy that cursed maze. We lost good soldiers . . . good friends. But we were never able to learn anything about how to navigate it, let alone destroy it. All we knew was that the Titans were using it to mobilize their troops and that it brought death and madness to any of ours who got too close. How did you do it? Did you manage to find Ariadne's string?"

"Um, no. We got a mortal who could see through the Mist. Well, my friends did. I got captured. We met up at the workshop, and my friends got me free, then we all escaped using the wings. We destroyed the labyrinth later, after . . . after a whole lot of crap had happened." Nico stared at the tabletop, remembering the Battle of the Labyrinth. He hadn't known the kids who'd died but he still regretted their loss.

"How?" asked Jason. "We tried tearing it down brick by brick and it didn't work. So how?"

"I released Daedalus's soul," said Nico. "That was what was holding the labyrinth together."

Jason stared at him incredulously for a moment. "Wait, sorry. You what?"

"Released – I didn't kill him," said Nico, realizing mid-sentence that might be bothering Jason. "Well, I mean, I kind of did, but he wasn't even really alive anymore. He was keeping his soul in an automaton."

Jason stared at him some more, still with that incredulous expression, then shrugged. "Well, good work."

"Thanks."

They both paused, neither sure what to say next, then Jason broke down.

"Okay, sorry, I was going to let it go, but I really want to know. Was Daedalus actually pretending to be alive with his soul in an automaton? Or was he like some kind of guardian statue in the center of the labyrinth or something?"

"Oh, he was pretending to be alive."

"That's messed up."

"Yeah, I know," said Nico, then winced as another memory hit him. "I actually wasn't much better, myself though. I was planning on taking his soul hostage and using it to revive my sister. She . . . she died. During the war. I wanted to bring her back. I would have done _anything._ But . . . my friends helped me see reason. So when the time came, I just released Daedalus's soul from the automaton he was housing it in, instead of capturing it for ransom."

The smile had melted off Jason's face. "I . . . I know what it's like to lose a sister."

Nico looked up sharply.

"I . . . there's nothing I can say that will make it any better, but . . . sometimes just knowing that you're not alone can make a difference," said Jason.

Nico had to agree. He also had to use this opportunity to find out more from Jason, if he could. "When did you lose your sister?"

"When I was very young," said Jason. "I don't remember much about her . . . just that she was the only one there for me."

If that wasn't a knife in the gut, with a twist, Nico didn't know what was. He almost broke down right there and told Jason about Thalia, but Anubis gave him the telepathic equivalent of a warning look. Nico bit his lip.

"My sister was the same," said Nico finally. "She was all I had. After I lost her, I found a new family, but I'm always going to miss her. But . . . with all the crazy stuff in this world, all the gods and magic, it's . . . well . . . sometimes . . . Sometimes things do turn out okay in the end."

"Yeah. Sometimes," agreed Jason.

"You'll see her again. I promise."

Jason looked at him curiously, then seemed to understand. "You would know, wouldn't you. You probably know more about the afterlife than anyone else."

_Hmm, well, considering I'm the son of the Greek Lord of the Dead, and I've got an Egyptian death god stuck in my head, yeah, you're probably right. _Nico would have really liked to say that, but restrained himself. That would have been doubly pointless to say, since death wasn't what he was even talking about now. He'd just deliberately misled Jason to think that's what they were talking about.

So Nico just nodded instead, and not so subtly redirected their conversation back onto their original topic. "The people at the school have other security measures that I noticed. Lots of cameras, mainly, and motion sensors, an elevator that you need a retina scan to activate -"

"How did you manage to get past that one?" asked Jason.

"You don't want to know," promised Nico.

"Yeah, I really do."

"No, you don't."

"Come on, tell me," urged Jason. "Whatever it is can't be that bad."

"That's what you think."

"Come on, we're cousins. You can trust me."

"It's not that I don't trust you, it's that you're going to think I'm a freak if I tell you, so let's just leave it."

"Please, Nico? I really want to know. What if I need to get through the elevator for some reason and you're not around?"

"Good point," admitted Nico. He didn't especially like the idea of Jason trying to get past all that security by himself, but they weren't officially working together. Jason might need to bring his own people back after Nico's job was finished. He didn't know how Romans dealt with the aftermath of situations like this one, but he knew the Greek way was to get out of Dodge and let the Mist take care of covering their tracks. Romans might be more thorough, and Nico couldn't say he disapproved of the idea of Jason bringing back a squadron or platoon, or whatever Roman military units were called, and burning everything in the Blue Ward. "To get past the elevator's retina scanner I had to . . . actually, I don't want to tell you after all."

"Oh come on," said Jason. "Please, I think I need to know this."

"Okay," sighed Nico. "To get past the elevator's retina scanner I had to . . . well . . . the elevator wouldn't work unless you could use the retina scanner. There's no other way. And I don't have any hypnotic powers, or Jedi mind tricks like a child of Hypnos, so . . . I did some research. Found out about the school's last dean, who died a year ago . . . then I raised his corpse, cut out his eye, and froze it in Stygian ice, figuring that if he was in charge of the school, hit scan would have gotten him in . . . and hoping that whoever operates their security didn't bother to delete his ID from their system."

Jason stared at him.

"I told you that you didn't want to know," said Nico.

"Wouldn't the guy's eye have been all decayed and stuff?" asked Jason finally, looking both disgusted and intrigued.

"Normally, yeah. I used my powers to restore it as much as I could, and it turned out to be good enough to work."

Jason stared at him again for several long moments, his expression warring between disgust and curiosity, and just when Nico was starting to worry that he'd lost a friend, Jason's curiosity won out. "Can I see it?"

Nico smirked and opened his Duat locker with a little help from Anubis, under the table. Then he held the Stygian ice encased eyeball out to Jason.

Jason stared down at it then nodded. "Well, that's one way to get past a retina scanner. So after you got down the elevator, what was next? Did you find out what they need all that security for?"

Nico let his shoulders hunch a bit and shook his head. "The elevator led to an underground corridor, and at the end of it, there was a wall with a seam, like it slid apart. But I couldn't get it to open. There wasn't a control panel, or door knob, or anything. I tried using some of my powers to open it, but couldn't with the ways I tried. There are a few more things I could try, but if I tried those ways, the people who run the place would definitely know someone was there."

"How?"

"Well, the doors would either be smashed down by a battering ram of stone the size of a semi that I summon out of the earth, or will have an acid burnt hole going straight through them, that can't be fixed. So . . . not very subtle."

Jason tapped his chin as he thought this over. "What are your plans now, Nico?"

"I've been acting up in small ways. Trying to get myself flagged as Blue Ward material without being too obvious about it. I don't know how long it will take. Right now I'm pretending like I'm toeing the line to see what I can and can't get away with. Since they haven't done anything to me so far, tomorrow I'm going to step it up a notch, and keep getting worse from here on out, until they have no choice but to do something."

"What are you planning on doing?"

Nico shrugged. "Set off a few firecrackers. Maybe stop up all the drains and flood the bathrooms. Hmm, I could let some rats loose in class. That might be fun."

"Go with the rats," advised Jason.

"I think I will. But I wanted to let you know all that I learned about the school's security. In case I do get sent to the Blue Ward and something goes wrong."

"Don't let anything go wrong," said Jason solemnly. "There's no guarantee that I'll be able to get to you in time if it does. Your other friends either."

"Nothing should go wrong. Even if they catch me, they can't hold me," said Nico. "I'm only letting you know just in case."

"What if you were to introduce me to your other friends?" asked Jason. "I could work with them and we could figure something out to make sure you had round the clock backup."

Nico shook his head. "Sorry. That's impossible. My friends don't trust other people easily."

Jason looked like he was debating about something for a second then asked, "Is it because I'm Roman?"

Nico stiffened and looked at Jason warily, wondering how much the other boy had deduced. He considered lying, then changed his mind almost immediately. If he lied himself into a hole that would only make Jason suspicious of him. "Sorry, but yes," admitted Nico. "That's the largest part of why I can't introduce you to them."

"And your friends . . . they're Egyptians, aren't they? House of Life? And you're part Egyptian too?"

So that was it. He was remembering Zia and her magic, most likely, and assuming that all of Nico's friends would be House of Life as well. And Nico remembered some remarks he'd heard Bast make of Romans before.

"Some of my friends are House of Life," admitted Nico. _But not all of them._ "They're sort of split off from the main branch of the House, and they do things differently. For awhile they weren't considered part of the House, but now they are."

"I assume you know that the gods sent us warnings about the House of Life and the Egyptian gods?" asked Jason.

"Yeah, I know." _I'm the reason it happened._ "But they're my friends. I trust them with my life."

Jason gave a half-nod, half-shrug gesture. "I won't try to make you believe otherwise. I don't believe in holding to the old prejudices anyway."

"I'll introduce you to some of my friends when this is over," said Nico. _And reintroduce you to your sister while I'm at it._ "But while we're trying to deal with the Blue Ward -"

"It's better not to have any distractions," agreed Jason. "Or have to worry about whether or not you can trust someone. I understand."

"Good. Thanks."

Jason waved that away. "No need for thanks. It's common sense."

They set up another time to meet up, so that Nico could tell Jason anything else he learned, then at Jason's insistence, also chose a second time, the next night, that Nico would come if he missed his first check in.

"If you don't show up by then, I'm going to assume something's gone wrong," Jason told him.

Nico looked at him curiously. "And what do you plan to do if you think something's gone wrong?"

"I'll think of something," promised Jason.

* * *

AN: Sorry for the delay of this chapter. I was swamped with school work all last week and most of the week before. But before things got too busy, I wrote and posted a spin-off fic from the last chapter called Greeking Out, telling the story of how Jason provoked Octavian into trying to strangle him with his King of Sparta obsession. I will start writing chapter 8 in an hour or two, after I get some homework done, so that I can have the next chapter for you as soon as possible.


	8. Chapter 8

8

It took Nico a week to get himself into the Blue Ward. It took a firecracker, a wad of gum in his math teacher's hair, two fist-fights, a flooded bathroom and adjoining hallway, and a minor explosion in his chemistry class before he finally succeeded. In the meantime, he checked in with Camp Half-Blood twice, and with Jason four times.

Poor Jason was bored to death watching and waiting, and very clearly wanted some action. Now, if anything went wrong, he'd get the action he so wanted.

Percy was worried. The rest of Camp Half-Blood less so, which was how Nico preferred it. It was nice to have people concerned about his well-being, but too many became over-bearing.

Brooklyn House was less worried than they usually were, in large part because they were getting ready for their own fight. When Nico had figured out the connection between Apophis's other attacks, he'd given them what they needed to figure out where the snake would be striking next: the Dallas Museum of Art. Nico had debated with himself whether or not to join them for that, but in the end, the decision was taken from him.

"That is it, Mr. diAngelo!" screamed his chemistry teacher when the smoke finally cleared. "I'll have you in the Blue Ward for this!"

That announcement was met by gasps of horror from the other students, who at first had been trying to warn Nico to stay in line, then lately, chose to ignore him, so as not to be associated with his bad behavior by any of their teachers.

"Big deal," returned Nico, while mentally thinking. _About freaking time! I was starting to think I'd have to set __some_one _on fire to get myself sent there._

He expected a reply from Anubis, but was only met with silence, and found that mildly insulting. Anubis was still in his head. He still possessed the god, and his powers. Anubis just wasn't putting as much of his consciousness into his demigod host these days. Nico knew he shouldn't be annoyed. Anubis was busy trying to save the world. And on top of that he was off plotting with Walt too, about that stuff that was going to get all three of them killed once Sadie found out what Anubis and Walt were up to.

So he squelched down his disappointment with Anubis's silence and spoke to his teacher instead.

"Oh no, not the Blue Ward," he said, and rolled his eyes. "Anything but that."

"You'll sing a different song once you're there young man!"

Nico responded as a true teenager would, proving that he was definitely thirteen now rather than twelve. "Fuck you!"

That would have gotten him drug to the dean's office by his ear back in the day. Now it just got him marched there with his teacher gripping his arm and muttering under his breath about the youth of today. Nico didn't improve his situation any by laughing about this. Not that he was trying to improve his situation. The Blue Ward was where he wanted to end up.

He had a meeting with the dean, who was a gray eyed man, on the old side, but not anciently so. Those eyes reminded him uncomfortably of a child of Annabeth's eyes, but considering the sort of organization he was working for, Nico thought it unlikely that the guy actually was a son of Athena.

Rather than yell at him, like Nico was expecting, Dean Landin regarded him coldly for several moments, locking eyes with him. Then he opened up a folder and thumbed through it.

"You've been quite busy these past two weeks, Mr. diAngelo," he said at last.

"Not as busy as your mom," countered Nico, still playing the rebellious teen. It was more fun than he expected.

Landin stiffened and his gray eyes grew stormy. Then he looked back down at Nico's rap sheet. "Heart of Liberty was founded to help special needs children, as you and every other child who we welcome into our walls knows. We expect a certain amount of acting out. We know that children like to test limits. But you have tested those limits excessively."

"But you have tested those limits excessively," mimicked Nico.

"Do you think to mock me?"

"Do you think to mock me?"

Landin glared at him. Nico glared right back. Then Landin laughed.

"Normally," he said, "we wait a bit longer to make certain a student is Blue Ward material. But I think in your case, no more waiting is necessary. Only a demigod has such a high capacity for getting into trouble."

Nico wasn't quite sure how to respond to that so instead of speaking he just gave Landin a weird look.

"Tell me, Mr. diAngelo, were you aware of what you are?" asked Landin.

"I'll answer your question, if you answer one of mine first."

"Oh? Ask then."

"How flammable is the Blue Ward?"

Landin scowled at him. "Very funny, Mr. diAngelo."

"The only thing that I think is funny here is your face."

"Now, tell me, do you know what you are?"

"You didn't answer my question, so I'm not going to answer yours."

"Who is your father, boy?"

Nico bristled. "I don't have to tell you."

"Do you know him?"

"I know your mom."

"What would you do if I told you that your father was a god?"

"Tell you I'm an atheist."

"Your father was a god, boy," said Lanin.

"I'm an atheist."

"We're not sure which god yet. You don't fall into any of the usual perimeters for the gods whose children we've seen before, but don't worry. We'll probably figure out who he was."

"Is this some new weird punishment technique?" asked Nico. "You're planning on role-playing me into being repentant? Because if so, I'll tell you right now, there's no way in hell that's going to work."

"You see things that no one else seems able to see," Landin told him seriously, ignoring how Nico was making fun of everything he said. "Monsters and magic creatures, strange people riding chariots through midday traffic that no one else finds strange, or people who seem more like mutated freaks with green skin or dog ears, or some other such ridiculousness, that no one else notices."

Nico fell silent at this and gave Landin his best suspicious gaze. He wanted Landin to confirm his own suspicions about him, but he wanted Landin to come to that conclusion by his (Nico's) reactions rather than by his words. It would look too weird if he suddenly became too cooperative, so Nico decided it was better to keep pretending he knew nothing. Landin gave a small smile, taking Nico's silence for acceptance.

"You have a hard time reading, but a few times, you've looked at something in your history class, something that was written in an ancient or dead language, and you were able to read it more clearly and easily than you've ever read anything written in English. You can't sit still, because of your ADHD, because your mind and body are hard-wired for battle. When someone attacks you, even though you've never had any self defense training, you move like you've been training to defend yourself for years."

"So what?" asked Nico sulkily. "That doesn't mean anything."

"So you admit that you recognize yourself in that description."

"I didn't admit anything!" shouted Nico. "You don't know what you're talking about!"

"I know things that you can't even imagine, boy," said the dean.

"Why? Because your dad was a god too? The god of knowledge?"

Landin's expression darkened. "My mother, actually. The goddess of wisdom and war. Ironic how I'm using her spheres of influence against her."

_Say what?_ Nico was having a hard time following. Landin had pretty much just admitted to being a son of Athena, and even though he didn't really feel like a demigod, Nico could believe it. Weaker demigods, even if they were children of the twelve Olympians, often didn't feel much different than normal humans. But even if he was a weak demigod, he was still a demigod . . . so why exactly was he trying to wage war against his mother? Was he one of Kronos's leftover minions, still fighting the not-so-good fight even though it had already been lost? Or was he something else? Was he working for some other threat against the gods that they didn't even know about yet?

_What do you make of this, Anubis?_ asked Nico. He waited for an answer. _Anubis?_

_Sorry, busy right now,_ Anubis told him in a strained mental voice.

_Okay, don't worry about it_, Nico told Anubis. To the dean, he said, "Dude . . . are you on crack or something? Are you messing with me, or do you seriously believe what you're saying?"

"Oh, I believe it alright," Landin told him. "More than that, I can tell you're starting to believe it too."

"No, I'm not. You're crazy."

Landin smiled. "Thankfully, what I need from you is not dependent on your belief. Nor on your cooperation -"

"That's good, because there's no way in hell I'm cooperating with you," said Nico. "You're the one who belongs in a special needs facility, not me. And in your case that special needs facility should be a mental institution."

After that, Nico was escorted into the Blue Ward. All the way into it. He kept up a stream of commentary on their way down, repeatedly insulting Landin's mother, and the security measures. "Are you kidding? There's no way that laser system thing's real," and "Really, dude? Seriously? A retina scanner? You know all someone has to do to get past those things is to cut out one of your eyes and use that!"

He watched with interest as they reached the door that he hadn't been able to get past on his last visit here. Landin pressed one hand against the door and the smooth material it was made out of lit up, showing circuitry underneath. It must have been some sort of palm scanner, because moments later, the door slid open. The door was six inches thick, Nico noted as they stepped through. Burning through that with his blood would be a pain and a half, but it wasn't impossible.

Abruptly, Nico was aware of his own growing nervousness. Panic was trying rise up inside him, his instincts urging him to turn around and flee. He hesitated and stopped walking as he tried to figure out where these feelings were coming from.

Nico was far from being a coward. He knew he didn't always act intelligently, but no one had ever accused him of being cowardly. He'd been willing to give up his own life so Bianca could live again, been willing to traverse the Underworld looking for a way to bring her back. He'd defied his father, practically dared his father to incinerate him. He'd faced monsters and psychotic magicians. And yeah, he'd faltered in the face of that last point on the list, but in his defense, Aziza had tortured him and almost killed him on several occasions, and he was a bit post traumatic about that mess.

It was his instincts that were causing him to feel fear now, he realized. His senses were gathering information and sending it straight to the parts of his brain that controlled his survival. He tried to break it down in his mind as he started walking again, but Anubis chose that moment to show some interest.

_What's wrong, Nico?_

_Not sure yet. Hang on, I'm trying to figure it out._

He didn't see anything disturbing, so that ruled out sight. Sound . . . he didn't hear anything suspicious. Footsteps and machinery, but no screams of pain or terror. For scent . . . he could smell antiseptic. A sterile smell, like in hospitals, which he guessed was enough to put anyone on edge. He could taste it in the air too. Disgusting. As for feeling . . .

Nico froze again as he realized what was wrong. It was like he'd stepped into a vacuum. Or some sort of power dampening field. His demigod powers had been weakened, if not taken away completely. He couldn't be sure without testing them, and he couldn't test them in front of Landin without giving himself away.

_This is not good._

_Don't worry. You are more than just a demigod, Nico,_ Anubis tried to reassure him.

_I know, but this . . . it's disconcerting._

_You'll be okay. You're not alone in this._

That did make Nico feel a lot better as he started walking again. He followed Landin down a long corridor. The walls around them seemed old and were made of stone. There were lots of doors on either side of them, but most of them were closed. He did get a glimpse into one when a woman in a research coat stepped out of it. Behind her he saw hundreds of eyes. Eyes that looked to have been cut out of photographs. Just the eyes.

_Nothing weird about that,_ he thought to Anubis, who he could still feel watching through his eyes. He heard the god laugh softly at his sarcasm, but this time it didn't make him feel any better.

It disturbed Nico even more than the lack of his demigod powers had, but Nico had recognized many of those eyes. The wise gray eyes of Athena's children, the burning intensity only found in the eyes of Ares' scions, Herme's kids' mischievous baby blues, the beautiful many colored eyes of Aphrodite's heirs, each different fleck of color like a different gemstone . . . Those were _demigod_ eyes.

Thankfully he didn't see any electric blue ones, like Thalia's and Jason's, or deep sea green ones like Percy's, but any relief he felt over that was drowned by the dread from seeing another type of eyes. Because half of the photographs showed unnaturally blue eyes that seemed devoid of all sanity. Eyes like Kratos's.

* * *

AN: Sorry I've been taking longer for updates. School's kicking my butt this semester. But I just turned in a major project and took a big test, so the rest of the week looks pretty easy. I'm going to try to get another chapter done before next Monday if I can.


	9. Chapter 9

9

Nico's new room was a cell. Like a prison cell. Or maybe more like a cell in a mental institution for the criminally insane. There was a door instead of bars, but the walls were padded. That seemed a little contradictory, with them putting a nice metal set of bunk beds in the room for them.

Also, Nico had a roomate. He was a little concerned about this at first or several reasons. The first being that his roomate had those creepy blue eyes that he'd seen in the pictures, and on that son of Kratos. The second was that his roommate was kept strapped down to the lower bunk with restraints. The third was that those restraints didn't really appear to be necessary. His roommate seemed to be catatonic. All he did was lie there, staring straight up with those freaky blue eyes of his, blinking every once in awhile, but aside from that not moving at all. He didn't respond when Nico spoke to him or gave his shoulder a shake. Nico considered undoing the restraints and seeing if that had any effect, but ultimately decided against it for now. He didn't know why the guy had been strapped down, and didn't want to find out why when the guy went into a Piers-reminiscent raging fit, ripped the bunk beds up from where they were bolted to the floor, and proceeded to beat him to death with them. That would suck.

Nico tested the strength of the door, its frame, and the lock and quickly realized he wasn't going to be able to break the door down. Not with his demigod powers being weakened by whatever this place was doing. Whatever kind of power dampener they had wasn't hurting Nico, at least not that he could tell, but it was cutting off his access to all of his demigod abilities. His boosted strength was gone, he could clearly tell, and by the way his steps had been lagging in the hall, on the way down, he was pretty sure whatever bonus his demigod blood gave to his speed had been knocked out as well. He couldn't sense the dead anymore, couldn't feel the shadows. Even his ADHD was gone.

Never had he been more grateful for the god that was stuck in his head. He still had access to his Egyptian magic, as he discovered when he had Anubis help him pull a candy-bar out of his Duat stash, and his blood still acted like nectrotic acid. He tested it to make sure. On the camera in his room. Nico didn't appreciate people spying on him.

He tore the camera apart, partly to hide evidence of the acid damage when they inevitably took it away from him, but also partly out of curiosity. He wasn't sure if whatever was suppressing his powers came from one big source that covered all or most of the Blue Ward, or if it came from a bunch of tinier sources scattered throughout the complex. He didn't find anything suspicious or mystical looking when he broke apart the camera, or anywhere else in his cell that he searched, but that wasn't enough to make Nico rule out that theory. He wasn't sure which would be easier. If it was one source, then he'd only have to destroy one thing to get his powers back, anywhere he went in the Blue Ward. But if the suppression came from smaller sources scattered throughout the ward, he'd be able to restore his powers in certain areas, which might be all that he needed.

They came and took away the broken camera less than half an hour after he dismantled it, but were at least smart enough not to try and replace it because Nico would have broken that one to pieces too. Winning his privacy was no small victory. After that he searched every inch of his room looking for, well, anything. He found that the floor had a slight slope toward the center underneath the linoleum, and it sounded slightly hollow when he rapped his fist against it. There was probably a drain underneath it, but not a big enough one to escape through. Percy might have been able to summon water through it if he was there and there wasn't that power dampening thing going on, but it was pretty useless to Nico.

There was a decent sized ventilation shaft on the wall across the room from the bed. A normal kid or demigod wouldn't have been able to reach it, unless they were an extremely good athlete even without the boost of power their god blood gave them, but even if they could, it was bolted in place. The room was well and truly secure, which left Nico with no doubts that a demigod without his or her powers would have no way out. He was just lucky that a demigod wasn't the only thing he was. There were two ways out that Nico could think of for himself, even without access to his shadow traveling. The first was using his blood to burn the lock off the door. The second was getting Anubis to use a _hadi_ spell and just splitting the door in half. So he wasn't worried.

He hopped up on top of his bunk to plan his next move.

His next check in with Camp Half-Blood wasn't for for a few days. Percy would start getting worried if he didn't check in by tomorrow since it had been a couple days since they'd last spoken. And Jason was expecting to see him tomorrow too. If he didn't show then Jason would wait twenty-four hours, when they had a backup check in time set. And if Nico didn't show by then . . . well Nico wasn't sure what Jason would decide to do. He didn't know Jason well enough to predict the other teen.

But Nico didn't plan on letting it get that far. It would be a little over twenty-four hours before anyone even knew to start worrying about him. Plenty of time to sneak out and find out what was going on in the Blue Ward. That creepy room with all those pictures of eyes seemed like a good place to start.

Nico took a nap while he was waiting for dark to fall. He'd always slept better during the day, and even without his demigod powers dictating his life now, he was still able to fall asleep easily, even with the lights on. He woke up the instant they turned off the lights that evening and got a sick shock. He couldn't see _anything_.

_Is this how most people see at night?_ he asked Anubis irritated by his sudden night-blindness.

_This is how most people see, or fail to see, when they're in a room that has no light at all,_ Anubis told him. _It's a bit different from seeing at night, when they have the moon, and stars, and light pollution to help them see._

_Oh. Well it sucks._

_I have some news,_ said Anubis, his mental tone letting Nico know that whatever he had to say was not good. He quickly began updating Nico on what the Kanes and the rest of Brooklyn House had discovered, how the Kanes were headed to Texas, and what they believed Apophis was up to. It was worse than Nico could have predicted. The final fight was nearly at hand.

_I can call this off,_ said Nico uncertainly. He didn't know if that was the right thing to do, with Jason and Camp Half-Blood depending on him . . . but the fate of the world was hanging in the balance and he would be damned before he missed yet another chance at punching out Apophis.

_No,_ Anubis told him. _Tonight Sadie and Carter are attempting to retrieve the scroll. They'll be amongst magicians from the 51st nome. If all goes well, they'll have the scroll and be out of there before Apophis arrives._

_One problem with that. Things never go well._

_The deciding battle will not take place tonight. It is better not to let Apophis know of your existence until it happens. He cannot anticipate how strong you might be if he doesn't know you exist._

_True . . . but I don't want to leave Sadie and Carter alone to face him._

_They won't be alone. Their best students will be with them. And the entire 51st nome._

_I'd still rather be there if they're facing him._

_Your time will come. Finish what you set out to do here. If all goes well, you'll be able to join them tomorrow._

Nico made a growling sound in his throat. _You never learn, do you?_

_Learn what?_

_About jinxes. If I wasn't your host, I'd swear you were trying to get me killed._

Nico made his way to the door. It wasn't too hard, even without being able to see anything. All he had to do was follow the wall until he reached it. The room wasn't very big anyway.

_Know any unlocking spells or should we just blast it?_

Anubis gave the telepathic equivalent of shaking his head then pointed two fingers at the door and muttered a few words. Hieroglyphics blazed through the darkness and the lock on the door clicked softly.

Nico eased it open carefully and looked cautiously out into the hallway. No one appeared to be around.

_Wait,_ ordered Anubis. Then he cast another spell. For a second, more hieroglyphics glowed around Nico. _Alright. Now you're invisible._

_Cool._

Nico walked swiftly through the corridor, taking care to keep his footsteps soft. There were a few people in other hallways but he was able to get past them with no trouble at all as he made his way back to the first hall. All of the doors were closed now, so he had to try to figure out which one had been the one with the creepy eye pictures from his memories.

_It was the seventh door, right? h_e asked Anubis.

_I thought it was the eighth._

So Nico stopped in front of the eighth door from the entrance and tested the door-knob. Luck was with him for a change and it was open. Using an unlocking spell wouldn't have been too much trouble, but it would have taken up energy, and without his demigod stamina, Nico was already starting to feel a little drained just from the little magic he and Anubis had worked so far.

It turned out that Anubis was wrong about which door the creepy eyes had been behind. The room they entered turned out to be someone's office. Nico almost shut the door and moved to the next one, but voices made him pause. Someone was coming.

He quickly ducked inside the office, shut the door behind him all but a crack, and listened.

"- still unclassified. We've compared his eyes to every known demigod's from the past thirty years without getting a match."

"It's always interesting to find something new. But I suppose they'll put off putting him through optics because of that?" said a young woman in a lab coat and big grey eyes behind geeky glasses. Athena eyes, Nico noted uncomfortably. How many demigods were working for these nutcases?

The woman's companion was a scrawny man who looked like a son of Hermes. "Not necessarily. They've got a high resolution copy of his student ID picture, so his eyes will be documented. There's no point in waiting to put him through optics. The younger they are when they put them through, the less likely they are to wind up with their brains scrambled."

"I thought it was the weaker they are?" the woman said.

"A lot of factors contribute to the outcome. The older they are, and the stronger their godly parent is seem to be the two factors that effect the procedure's results the most. Everyone over the age of twelve who's ever had the surgery has mentally degraded very rapidly. And the children of the twelve Olympians, or the eight that can actually have children usually start losing it when they hit adolescence. Some earlier."

"But there's ten Olympians that can can have demigod children," the woman pointed out. Her tone was petty, like she was glad to find something to correct the older man about.

"You know what I mean. There are those two who never have demigod children, then those other two who aren't supposed to and have had like one apiece in the past seventy years, and they hardly count."

"How many children actually come through the procedure and turn out normal?" asked the woman, sounding troubled now.

"More than used to."

"How many?"

"You can look up the statistics if you really want to know. But I'd advise you not to. Remember why we're doing this. You know these sacrifices are necessary," the man said sternly.

"I know but . . . I don't like the idea of hurting these children, even if it is for the sake of humanity's best interest."

"Then don't think of it as hurting them," said the man. "Think of it as putting them down. You know what fate waits for them. A life of being hounded by monsters, drafted into either a new-agey cult camp or a child army, and getting caught up in the petty squabbles or full out wars of the gods."

"Yes. You're right," said the woman meekly. She said something else, but Nico didn't hear it, because they disappeared into the room that Nico was 90 percent certain was the creepy eye room, and closed the door behind them.

_What did you make of that?_ asked Nico.

_Nothing good._

_Word. I wish I'd heard more though._

_You heard enough. _

_Optics means something about eyes, right?_

_Yes._

Nico sighed. _They're in the room I need to be in. It seems too risky to try getting in while they're in there._

_No matter. Search this room while we wait for them to leave. _

Nico gave the mental equivalent of a nod and turned toward the computer. That seemed like the best place to start.

* * *

AN: Another shortish chapter. Sorry. This week's looking pretty busy for me, but I'll post the next chappie as soon as I'm able to. Next time Nico finally figures out exactly what's going on.


	10. Chapter 10

10

Almost immediately, Nico made an incredible discovery.

_Anubis? Anubis! I can read!_

For the first time in his life, Nico was able to look at something written in the English language without the letters swimming around on the page, changing their order on him, or flipping around so they were backwards. Before he'd always had to devote every bit of his not-so-considerable concentration just to figure out what a single paragraph said, and by the time he'd finished it, he'd lost interest. Now, with all of his demigod powers and throwbacks being blocked, reading was practically effortless.

Anubis felt his excitement and seemed amused. _I'm sorry you can't commemorate the occasion by curling up with a good book._

_Shut up. This is big for me. I can read a whole paragraph without getting bored or confused. I can read a whole _page_ without getting bored or confused!_

_Enjoy it while it lasts,_ advised Anubis.

That thought was a bit sobering, but Nico had already known his new-found reading skills weren't permanent.

He wasn't even able to fully enjoy it while it lasted since he had a job to do. He ended up doing more skimming than reading as he searched for relevant information about his enemies and what they were doing. A lot of it was confusing. Even though he was now able to read, that didn't automatically grant him a better vocabulary. There were lots of medical terms and other big words in the notes and documents Nico found in the file cabinets and on the desk that even Anubis didn't know what they meant.

_Procedure successfully removed the layer of altered melanin from subject's iris . . . _Nico furrowed his brow._ What's melanin?_

_I don't know._

_While one 30 second exposure to lasers is sufficient to permanently remove said layer in normal humans, demigods require follow up treatments. Wait, wait, wait! Am I reading this right? They're cutting peoples' eyes up with laser?_ Nico was horrified.

_It's not necessarily as bad as it sounds. Lasers can be used to correct problems with human vision, _Anubis told him.

_But to cut layers out of their eyes?_ Nico couldn't help but shudder. _That sounds really freaking horrible. That doesn't even happen in the Field of Punishment._

_I don't see how it's much different than cutting out someone's wisdom teeth. _

_It's just different. Trust me on that,_ said Nico, then he read on. _Concerns about pig . . .men . . . tary glau . . . oma? Is that what that word is?_

_I don't know, and I don't know what it means._

_What good are you? _teased Nico. _Concerns about pigmentary glaucoma seem to not be valid . . . chronic eye seepage not occurring in any test subjects, damn that sounds nasty. Neither have the development of cataracts been a problem, however coloration of demigod eyes differs from those of normal humans, resulting in a vivid, overly bright shade of blue. It is possible this is caused by repeated removal of melanin, but paranormal explanations cannot be ruled out at this stage._

Nico took a deep breath as he tried to process the information he'd just acquired. _So they're removing this melanin stuff from demigods' eyes and deliberately turning them blue. The question is why. Any ideas?_

Anubis gave the telepathic equivalent of a shrug. _It must be for more than merely cosmetic purposes._

Nico frowned, remembering another organization that had been a big fan of blue eyes . . . of course they'd also liked blond hair too. They'd been trying create some sort of master race. Could this be a new incarnation of that old idea? Somehow Nico didn't think so. Demigods weren't a race. They were hybrids. They could have kids, yeah, if they didn't get eaten by monsters before they got old enough for that, but their kids rarely inherited their gifts. Besides, even if these people were trying to put together some sort of master race, using demigods as the basis for it, why were they so bothered about getting all their eyes blue? They seemed to already know that a demigod's lineage could be determined by their eyes. That gave them an indication of what kind of powers they could expect from most any given demigod. Even if they were trying to clone demigods or transplant their powers somehow, the eyes of their knockoffs were still likely to let them know what they could expect from their creations.

Another thought occurred to Nico, and was supported by what he'd just heard. What if there was more to a demigod's eyes than there was to a human's? Demigods almost always had their godly parents' eyes. Percy's sea greens were exactly like Poseidon's. Annabeth and all her siblings in the Athena cabin all had the same wide grey eyes that their mother did. Nico's own eyes were carbon copies of Hades's, every bit as dark and fierce.

Anubis caught on to Nico's train of thought and voiced his agreement. _Many cultures believe that the eyes are windows to the soul. That may be more literal for demigods than for most._

_So if a demigod's eyes house our connection to our parents, taking pieces out of our eyes could risk severing that connection,_ thought Nico. It was still only a theory but the more he thought about it, the more valid it sounded. _These notes seem to hint that the melanin that they're taking out of demigods' eyes is altered from how a human's would be. It takes them several tries to remove the melanin . . . whatever melanin is. And our eyes turn a different, brighter, weirder shade of blue than a normal human's after their surgery. _

_So now we most likely know what they're doing,_ said Anubis. _We still have yet to find out why. And I don't buy the excuses those people we overheard made about trying to save you from your fate._

Nico smirked. _What, you don't think they were trustworthy?_

Anubis didn't bother answering that. He suddenly seemed distracted.

_Something wrong?_ Nico asked him.

_The Kanes have run into trouble._

_Can you help them?_

_No. Not where they are now._

Nico scowled. _I should be there with them. I can still make it there. I just have to get out of here and my powers will be back._

_No. You will not be able to reach them. There are wards against demigods at the museum. _

_What? Since when do they ward against demigods? _demanded Nico.

_Perhaps since your father threatened to kill the entire House of Life?_

_Hey, it is not my fault they're all a bunch of alarmist cowards._

_The point remains, you cannot help them. It would be better for you to finish your mission here. _

Nico didn't like it, but he knew Anubis was right. _Fine. All I need to do now is find out exactly what cause they think is worth risking insane demigods being let loose on the world for and then I'm done. _

He got Anubis to open his Duat locker and took out a digital camera that Jason had loaned him, claiming it was an important spy tool. He took pictures of all the documents he'd been reading, and hoped that the camera's resolution would be high enough that they could be read from the photos. Next time he would be better prepared with a camera of his own that would definitely have a high enough resolution. He was pretty damn good at this spying and infiltrating thing if he did say so himself. Perhaps he could make a career out of it in a few years, if he didn't end up bringing on the apocalypse before then.

_Or you could choose a safer job that people wouldn't have to constantly worry about you because of,_ suggested Anubis.

_Like what? _asked Nico sardonically. _A cell phone salesman? Or maybe a computer programer? That will work great with my dyslexia and ADHD._

_I'm not suggesting you do something impossible for you, or something that would bore you to death,_ said Anubis, sounding a bit annoyed. _You could be the best coroner in the world You're a pretty good detective too. You're good at figuring things out. If you could just figure out a career for yourself that wouldn't leave your cousins and friends fretting over your safety night and day, you'd be set._

He had a point . . . not that Nico had been _completely_ serious about wanting to be a spy. He was only thirteen . . . thirteen-ish. Whatever. Point was, he was a long way from having to make any decisions about his future career. Nico conveyed all this to the parasitic god with a strong tone of '_so mind your own business' _to it, but he couldn't hide the fact that he kind of liked Anubis's suggestion that he become a detective. Detective di Angelo. Nico liked the sound of that.

It was with reluctance that he turned his attention back to the task at hand. He was still invisible, but the spell was starting to sap his energy. Without his demigod abilities to give him extra staying power, he knew he wouldn't be able to sustain it much longer, and telepathed that fact to Anubis.

_It might be best to return to your room for the night, and try to discover this facility's reasons for what they're doing tomorrow,_ suggested Anubis.

_But I have to check in with Percy and Jason tomorrow night and I want to get out of here and into the fight against Apophis ASAP, _said Nico. _We know what they're doing. I don't really care why, so long as we burn this place to the ground before this is all said and done. We should make a break for it now._

Anubis was silent for a moment. Nico tried to sense his thoughts, but Anubis was better at blocking his thoughts than Nico was at getting around said blocks. Still, Nico managed to glean a few images and a bitter taste, like fear or worry. He got a quick glimpse of Sadie's face and his heart, or his heart scarab as the case was, started to beat faster.

_Something just happened, didn't it?_ he demanded.

_Yes,_ admitted Anubis.

_Is Sadie . . . is she . . ._

_I don't know._

_Go, _ordered Nico. _Use all your consciousness, all your power, to do whatever you can. _

_But you -_

_I'll be fine. I'll get back to my cell and let this spell drop. Go._

_Nico -_

_GO! s_houted Nico, knowing Anubis wanted to, just as much as Nico wanted him to.

Anubis went. Within seconds his consciousness had receded from Nico's mind as much as was possible and Nico could only feel a faint echo of the god's mind. It would have been a little lonely, if Nico wasn't so worried about the Kanes.

He quickly replaced everything that he had moved, stored his camera in his Duat locker (which was a struggle without Anubis to open it for him, but Nico managed) then slipped back into the hallway. He spared a few seconds to press one ear against the door of the creepy eye room. The voices on the other side of the door were too muffled for him to understand, but confirmed that the people he and Anubis had overheard earlier were still in there. He wondered if staying up this late to work was a common occurrence around here, but didn't care all that much. If he had his way, this stupid school wouldn't be standing much longer.

Nico stole back to his room, passing three other people who worked there on his way. His door was unlocked, the way Anubis had left it. Nico had no way of locking it up himself after he entered, since it was the kind of lock that you could only lock or unlock if you had the key. There was nothing he could do about that, except close the door behind him and count on whoever opened it next not checking to see if it was already unlocked before they used their key to unlock it. If they realized his room had been unlocked all night and he hadn't made an escape attempt it might look suspicious.

Right after the door snapped shut behind him and darkness shrouded the entire room, Nico let his invisibility spell fall, then slumped against the wall, exhausted. Now he knew how the other kids at Brooklyn House always felt after they used magic. It had never drained Nico like this before, when he'd had access to his demigod stamina and strength. He would be glad when he finally got his powers back.

Suddenly he heard an odd sound, like a snap and a rush of air. Something stung his neck.

"Ouch!" He instinctively reached for the place that hurt. His fingers touched something smooth and cold. A dart. "Whaaaaaaa?"

_Oh damn._

Nico realized what was happening. Kind of. This wasn't his first time being drugged into unconsciousness. His knees buckled and he toppled to the floor as the lights came on. Even though he was laying on the ground, the room was still spinning.

_This is bad._

"Oh Mr. di Angelo," said Landin, smirking at him, a tranquilizer gun in his hand. "I'm afraid you've violated your curfew."

* * *

AN: And I'll end it right there. Because I'm evil. But not so evil that I'll leave you hanging there too long. I'm making every effort to get the next chapter done by Monday. And I'm cutting this AN short to go work on it right now. Asilda out.


	11. Chapter 11

Two chapters in two days! Because I felt kind of bad leaving you guys hanging at the end of last chapter.

* * *

11

The worst thing about whatever was on the dart Nico had been shot with was that it didn't knock him out. It only paralyzed him. He tried to fight against it, but all his limbs suddenly felt like they were made out of lead.

He fought back his panic as he heard Landin radio someone to come collect him, then used all the control he had over the muscles in his face to narrow his eyes at the bastard when Landin knelt down in front of him.

"That was a nice trick you did. That little disappearing act of yours. I have to admit, I was beginning to worry that you'd actually slipped away."

If Nico could have talked he would have spat out a few curses in the bastard's face. Hades, he would have spat in his face literally.

But paralyzed, he was helpless to do anything as those two people he'd heard go into the creepy eye room came and lifted him off the ground.

_You have no idea who you're messing with . . . _what_ your messing with,_ Nico tried to tell them with his eyes. _Even without my demigod powers I'm far from helpless._

"Take him to optics," said Landin to his lackeys, and they both draped one of Nico's arms over their shoulders and started carrying him out.

_Optics? Is that where they do their freaky laser eye-surgery thing?_ Nico felt panic well up. _A-Anubis? You there?_

He didn't feel any sort of response from the god. That could only mean that Sadie and the others still required his full attention, and Nico would be damned if he took that away from them. If they required all of Anubis's attention that meant at least one of them, probably Sadie, was most likely in mortal danger. Nico wasn't. He would deal with this himself. He wasn't sure how yet, but he'd manage somehow.

_Think. There's got to be a way out of this._ Nico took a mental inventory of what he had at his disposal. His black blood seemed to be his best weapon now. It would burn through anything. And he had a limited amount of Egyptian magic at his disposal. Now he wished that he'd paid more attention in the classes at Brooklyn House. He'd been a fool to think he'd always be able to call on Anubis to do his spells for him.

_I can get into my Duat locker on my own. I have stuff in there I can use. Firecrackers. My staff. More Stygian iron weapons, and some celestial bronze stuff too. But if I can't move, I can't use them. Or can I?_

A plan began to form in Nico's mind. It was devious. A little dangerous. Okay, more than a little dangerous. But it was necessary. He couldn't come up with anything else on such short notice. He tried, but couldn't. And screaming in his own mind for Anubis to help him wasn't a real plan. It might work, but Nico would not resort to that. He would stand on his own two feet this time. Metaphorically. Paralyzed as he was, he couldn't stand at all, but that didn't matter. He didn't need to move a single muscle to make his plan work. This would be all about getting the magic right.

He wished that he could have sneered at Landin's lackeys as they drug him into the creepy eye room and strapped him into an examination chair. They were right to take precautions with a son of Hades . . . but those precautions wouldn't be enough. Not for a host of Anubis. Not by a long shot.

_You fools are going to regret this._

Even with a plan, it was difficult to fight off his fear as they clamped these . . . things over his eyelids. Things that held his eyes open and made it so that he couldn't blink. Then they brought this big machine forward with these two scope looking things . . . or maybe they actually looked more like twin muzzles of some sort of gun. Nico was willing to bet his Mythomagic collection that those were where the laser would be coming out of. They moved it right up so that it was directly in front of him and adjusted the laser nozzles so that they were right in front of his eyes, and Nico felt unbridled panic start to rise up in him because if they kept the machine right there his plan wouldn't work . . . or maybe it could, but it would have some really horrible consequences for him.

_Don't be a wuss,_ he told himself. _If it's a choice between a few scars or going completely off the wall insane, I'll take the scars. _

But then it turned out that his worries were for naught, and they moved the machine back, several feet away.

"You're probably confused right now, Mr. di Angelo . . . if that really is your name," said Landin. "It seems to me like you haven't been completely truthful with me."

_And it seems to me that it would be fun to watch your face rot off,_ Nico thought at him.

"Or perhaps not. Perhaps you are ignorant as to why you have these strange abilities that you exhibited. Either way, I shall make some explanations -"

_Please tell me he's not going to do a big super-villain reveal right now,_ Nico mentally groaned.

"- later."

_Thank Hades._

"We shall have that conversation when you are capable of speaking. But now we will begin the process which will cure you of your affliction."

_Affliction? How can you think being a demigod is an affliction when you yourself are a demigod, you freaking hypocrite?_

"Minnie. Pietro. Please begin."

_And you please stand right next to the machine, you freak,_ thought Nico. _I want you close for this, you bastard._

His anger made it easier for him to concentrate. Usually that was not the case, but in this situation he could either feel smoldering anger or blinding panic. He chose anger. And as the lasers turned on and began burning away whatever it was in his eyes that was vital to him retaining his power, his sanity, and his dashingly dark eye color, he had to use every bit of his concentrating ability to put his plan into action.

Thirty seconds was all the time he knew he'd have to pull it off, but realistically, even taking that long would be a very bad thing. Humans lost all their melanin (whatever that was, Nico still wasn't sure) in one thirty second exposure to these lasers. The notes Nico read said that demigods took multiple sessions, but that didn't mean thirty seconds wouldn't steal away a significant amount of his melanin.

_Do this!_ Nico ordered himself as his vision filled with light. _NOW!_

His Duat storage locker opened. Several feet away from him. Right above the laser surgery machine. And his firecrackers and fireworks, sparklers, smoke-bombs, and Roman-candles all came pouring out. They momentarily blocked the lasers from reaching Nico's eyes, and the lasers burned into them instead.

And ignited them.

It was an impressive explosion. Nico could tell even though he was blinded by the light. He heard the whooshing song of a booming so loud that it left all other sounds muffled, and he saw bright colors, and blazes, and sparks. And smoke. Lots and lots of smoke. He could smell burning. And best of all, the lasers were no longer cutting into his eyeballs.

_YES! Booyah!_

Suddenly the sprinkler system activated, dousing Nico, and the other poor fools in the optics room with water. It was something of a relief to Nico. His eyes had been starting to burn since he couldn't blink to rehydrate them.

Then something else happened that took Nico by surprise. Without warning, strength flooded into him. His demigod strength.

Nico was confused but relieved beyond all measure. His connection to his father hadn't been severed. All of his melanin (whatever the heck melanin was) had not been stolen. He felt just as strong as ever.

The red flashing lights that began pulsing through the star-bursts covering his vision helped him realize what most likely was happening. Those had to be emergency lights. The fire had probably triggered them. And at the same time, the power dampener had been shut off. Nico didn't know if it was some sort of system failure, or because power was being diverted from whatever powered their dampener thing to fuel the emergency lights, or if it was a deliberate precaution that the bastard demigods running this place had put in, so that they too would have their powers if some sort of disaster happened. Nico didn't really care why either. Finding this out was a very good thing. Now he had a way to get his powers back the very next time he needed them! Zia had made damn sure that Nico knew how to throw a halfway decent fireball on his own, without relying on Anubis to do it for him. When the time came for him to make his escape, all he'd have to do would be to throw some fire at the nearest sprinkler and set the system off. Then he could either fight his way free or find some darkness and shadow travel out.

_Score!_

Nico suddenly became aware of something else. A spiritual presence.

_Nico! s_creamed a familiar voice.

_Percy?_

His cousin was dream-walking again. He could see Percy's ghostly outline through the flashes of the emergency lights and the blind spots still obscuring his vision. But he didn't have to be able to see clearly to know there was a horrified look on Percy's face. Because when Nico thought about it objectively, he knew that his situation had to look pretty bad.

_Hey, don't worry Percy,_ Nico tried to reassure his cousin. _I've got the situation entirely under control._

_What in Hades are you talking about? You call this under control?_ Apparently Percy didn't believe him.

_I know it looks bad,_ admitted Nico, _but I just averted a disaster and now I've got these guys exactly where I want them._

_ARE YOU COMPLETELY INSANE!?_

_Trust me, Percy, I've got this. You don't have to come charging here to rescue me._

Nico never got to hear Percy's reply because suddenly the emergency lights switched off, and the dampener switched back on. _Damn it. Now he's definitely going to come try to save me._

"What in Hades, I mean hell, just happened?"

"I don't know!"

"The laser cutter just exploded -"

"Thank you Captain Obvious! What I want to know is why!"

"I don't know! Mechanical error, maybe? A glitch, a power surge . . ."

"Could it have been the boy?"

"I don't – no, it couldn't have been. He was under the effects of the dampener too."

"He was under them when he turned invisible and snuck out of his room too, you might remember!"

"That was clearly some illusion. A trick of the Mist. His ability to do that wouldn't necessarily have been completely shut off by our reflectors. Even certain humans can affect it and bend it to their wills. This was an explosion. A real explosion, not an illusion of one. All the Mist in the world can't blow up a high tech machine!"

_No, but apparently some drugstore fireworks can,_ Nico thought with a smirk. And he was able to smirk now, he realized. Even having his demigod powers back for a couple seconds had helped flush the drugs from his system. Or maybe his black blood had broken the drugs down faster than it should have. He could move his fingers too now, he found. But when he tried to wiggle his toes, he couldn't tell if he was doing anything or not.

When Landin's lackeys unstrapped him from the examination chair, unclamped his eyelids, and lifted him to carry him back to his room, he let them. He was still too drugged to make a break for it he knew. As soon as the drugs wore off completely, escape would be easy. He wasn't sure how long that would take, but Nico didn't think it would be before the morning.

Unless Anubis came back and told him that Sadie and the others were okay, Nico's new plan was to escape as soon as possible, and regroup with the Kanes. He kind of wanted to know why Landin and the others had such a blue eye fetish, but compared with Sadie's safety, or Carter's, or any of his other friends at Brooklyn House, he serious didn't give a damn about why Landin and his cronies were doing what they were doing. He had enough on those guys for Camp Half-Blood to take some sort of action now. And if Camp Half-Blood wouldn't, Nico would do something on his own. If Jason's camp didn't do something first. It didn't matter who did it, as long as this place went down.

* * *

AN: Explanation time since I skipped over it last chapter. First, cosmetic eye surgery that turns brown eyes blue really does exist, but isn't, legal in the US yet. I did a report on it last year for the self esteem unit of my health/gym class. Yeah, I know, book work for gym should be illegal, but at least I got some ideas for my fics out of it. Anyways, the surgery uses lasers to remove a layer of melanin (brown pigment/colored chemicals) from brown eyes. Everyone has a layer of blue coloration underneath. There are risks for having this procedure done, like various nasty eye diseases. A lot more research on this surgery will have to be done for it to ever be legalized in the US. But yeah, I couldn't help but think about Rick Riordan's demigods while I was doing that report. Almost all of them have their godly parents' eyes . . . so I wondered what would happen if someone came along and tried to change that? That aside, Nico's troubles aren't quite over yet. I've been trying to make him a stronger character this fic, and hope that I showed him doing a good job of working through problems on his own this chapter. The way I'm writing him, he's grown up enough to know that there's a lot riding on his shoulders, and knows the kind of person he wants to be, thanks to Percy's example, but he isn't quite sure how to become that person yet. He's trying very hard though, and has already embraced the most important aspect of Percy's philosophy: you take care of your friends.

Finally, I have another recommendation for a good read, and the best part about this one is that it can be read for free online. The series is called Facade, and it's about these three teens who hunt down supernatural menaces, which is a pretty common theme these days, I know. What sets this series apart is that all three of the main characters are kind of crazy. There's a boy from Ireland who reminds me of Artemis Fowl before he developed that pesky conscience. His name is Declan, and he's a diagnosed sociopath. His parents sent him to stay with his relatives in America because they thought he was a monster. Another character is Blaire, a bi-polar ex-beauty queen who had a "Toddlers and Tiaras" type upbringing, until she was kidnapped by the fae. She fought her way free then found a fae using illusions to pretend to be her at home, then killed it with a hammer. In front of her parents. She now pretty much lives to kill all things supernatural. (I'm dressing as her for Halloween because I really like the way they describe her outfits. Her favorite hairstyle is a messy bun with a pair of scissors stuck through it, which she uses as a weapon on occasion) And Stray is a runaway foster kid who doesn't really trust anyone, and who has some inexplicable powers, like being able to see through any illusion. He won't even tell the others his real name, he trusts them so little, and he's a bit of a klepto. You find out his back-story near the end of the first book, and I don't want to give spoilers, but it's even more messed up than the other two's. The way the three of them interact at times is so bizarre, it's hard to describe it. To give an example, you remember that part in The Lightning Thief, when Percy and co were stowing away in the back of that truck that was smuggling and mistreating the lion and zebra, and how their solution was to let the animals loose with a satyr's blessing when the truck stopped in Vegas? The Facade kids' solution probably would have been to knock the smugglers out with a crowbar, put them in a cage (with the zebra if they were lucky) and steal their truck.

Only the first one is out right now, but I think the next one will be available in Jan. You can read it at hlfleming .com It's by the same author who wrote the Gargoyle Legends that I'm always going on about. I'm actually planning a collaboration AU with another fanfic author on this site, to write some fics that crossover the world of Facade with the world of Percy Jackson, including the Kanes and Camp Jupiter. But those fics won't be started until after I've finished this one. And this AN now seems long enough to make up for the shortness of last chapter's, lol. I'm not sure when the next chapter will be finished, but I'll update as soon as I can.


	12. Chapter 12

12

_WHAT IN RA'S NAME WERE YOU THINKING?_

Nico took a break from trying to wiggle his toes to wince at Anubis's scream. _Hey, welcome back. Everything alright with Sadie?_

_Don't you change the subject! Why didn't you scream for me?_ demanded Anubis.

_Because I didn't need your help. I was able to take care of it on my own,_ said Nico patiently. _Is Sadie okay?_

_Nearly getting your melanin carved out with lasers is not an acceptable way of dealing with the situation, Nico!_

_Oh, do we know what melanin is now? _Nico wanted to know. He figured Sadie and the others must be okay, or else Anubis wouldn't be wasting so much time yelling at him.

_No, we don't, and that's not the point! You could have died, Nico! You could have been driven crazy!_

_The notes we found said it takes repeated treatments to steal all a demigod's melanin,_ Nico reminded him. _I really wish I knew what that was._

_Nico?_

_Anubis?_

_When we get out of here, you're grounded._

Nico scoffed. _Yeah. Sure._

_I'm serious._

_Dude, you're not my dad! You can't ground me._

_Maybe not, but Percy can._

_What? No, he can't!_

_We'll see about that._

_Alright, whatever. Is Sadie okay?_

Thankfully, Anubis seemed to have calmed down now that the initial shock of learning how close Nico had come to disaster had worn off. _She and the others are fine. _

_Good. I was worried._

You _were worried?_

_I'm allowed to be worried._

_Worry about yourself._

_Dude, I already told you, I took care of it. I had everything under control._

Anubis telepathed his disbelief of that remark.

_My plan was awesome,_ said Nico adamantly. _You're just jealous you didn't come up with it._

He felt Anubis going through his recent memories, taking more care to absorb the details this time, and felt the god's grudging respect about the way he'd handled the situation. Nico knew that what upset Anubis was mainly that Nico had been in that situation to begin with. And that he hadn't called for Anubis's help. Anubis had to admit, even if it was only to himself, that Nico had handled the situation well. And of course, admitting something to himself meant admitting it to Nico too, since their souls were still fused.

_So what happened with Sadie and Carter?_ asked Nico. _And the rest of them?_

Anubis quickly filled Nico in on what had happened in Dallas. More than anything, Nico wished he could have been there. He couldn't change the past, he knew, but he could do better for the future. It seemed like the prize fight was right about to start. Ergo, it was time to get out of here.

_Time to go,_ he said to Anubis.

_Past time,_ agreed the god.

_These drugs are still messing me up. Can you do anything about them?_

Anubis gave a telepathic nod and Nico felt a rushing sensation course through him. Like the time he and Julian had a Red Bull drinking contest. The sluggish feeling that had been plaguing him evaporated.

_Cool. Thanks._

_Nico?_ Anubis sounded uncharacteristically hesitant.

_Yeah?_

_I would have come. If you'd telepathed enough to get my attention, I would have come to help you. You know that, right?_

Nico's throat felt oddly constricted for some strange reason. Maybe a side effect of the drugs, or whatever Anubis had done to get rid of them. _I know, _he told Anubis. _But the Kanes needed you more._

_You handled it well._

Nico beamed . . . even though he was still strapped to his bed. _Thanks!_

Getting out of his restraints was easy. All he had to do was twist one wrist against the bonds until he'd worn away enough of his skin to draw blood. Then the restraint started fizzling like pop rocks in soda, melting away into nothing. Once he had one hand free, he was able to unstrap his other hand and his feet.

But no sooner had he gotten his feet free than an alarm start blaring.

_Intruder alarm?_ asked Nico.

_Probably, _Anubis agreed.

Nico shrugged and opened his Duat locker. He pulled out a lighter and balanced dangerously far over the edge of his bunk, so that he could press the flame against the sprinkler nozzle on the ceiling. _Percy got here faster than I thought he would._

* * *

Jason was very conflicted. Something was obviously going on at the school that night. All his instincts were telling him that Nico had gotten himself in some sort of trouble.

He didn't have any concrete proof . . . just a couple unsettling instances.

First, there had been some sort of disturbance at the school. They'd had a fire drill after lights out. At least they were saying it was a drill. Jason had noticed the commotion and snuck close enough to listen when the fire department showed up. The school's fire alarm system was patched into some security network, so the fire department had been notified immediately. Whenever a drill was supposed to be conducted, the department was supposed to be notified beforehand. The school's dean was insisting that the drill had been scheduled, and that the fire fighters were just incompetent. The fire department was suspicious, and rightfully so, because the dean smelled like smoke and looked a little singed.

Jason had searched for Nico in the commotion but hadn't found him. He knew that Nico had other people he went to check in with at nights, so there was a chance he hadn't even been there . . . but Jason had a bad feeling about this. There was an old Camp Jupiter saying: "Whenever there is trouble, a child of the Elder Three will be there." Everything about Jason's life pretty much proved that old saying true. And everything he knew from other children of the Elder Three, from legends, and history. Heck, the last time a son of Neptune had come to Camp Jupiter, he'd caused the Great San Francisco Earthquake.

It wasn't an impossibility that an unscheduled fire drill, or a minor fire or explosion could occur at a school when there was a son of Pluto attending without the son of Pluto being involved . . . but Jason wouldn't bet on those odds.

He tried to take the proper steps to avoid doing anything brash. He waited at his and Nico's usual meeting place, at the usual time for them to meet. If Nico was responsible, which Jason thought he was, he would check in when he learned what had happened, even though they weren't scheduled to meet until the next night.

When Nico didn't show up, Jason got out his surveillance equipment and tried to look through the window of Nico's room. He felt kind of stalkerish doing that, but his friend's life or sanity could be on the line. When he couldn't find any sign of Nico being in that room, he decided more drastic measures were necessary. And that Heart of Liberty hadn't responded fast enough to their last fire drill. They clearly needed more practice.

He took control of the winds and levitated himself over the fence, entered the school through a first story window, and pulled the closest fire alarm. Then he quickly left the way he came and waited outside the fence for the students to be evacuated again.

The kids were sleepy and irritable, having been woken up twice in one night for unplanned fire drills. Their teachers even more so. Perhaps that was why they weren't overly attentive to their students, even though they were technically in the middle of an emergency situation.

"Excuse me?" asked Jason, when he managed to get close to a group of them while their teacher drifted off to talk to another.

"Wh-what do you want?" yawned one of them.

"Do you know a boy named Nico? Nico di Angelo? He just started at this school."

"Never heard of him. Go away."

"Wait, you know Nico?" asked another kid.

"He's my cousin," answered Jason. Technically it was true. "Do you know him?"

The boy looked at Jason with a troubled expression.

"Did something happen to him?" asked Jason.

"I . . . he . . . it's not . . ."

"Did they take him to the Blue Ward?" asked Jason.

The kid nodded.

"When?"

"Earlier today. This morning."

Since morning. He'd been there since morning. Jason thanked the kid and immediately walked away. Not too far. Just far enough away from prying eyes. Then he lifted himself with the winds again, high enough to keep anyone from seeing him. He dropped down by the same window he'd entered through earlier, and took out the map that Nico had drawn for him on a McDonald's napkin, showing the layout of the ground floor, and how to get to the Blue Ward.

Figuring out the right course of action wasn't easy for this mission. There was nothing in the Camp Jupiter handbook that dealt with breaking into secret compounds where demigods were being driven out of their minds. Jason wasn't even officially here, so he didn't even have any backup. There were a thousand and one ways that he could mess this operation up and get himself captured. But if he did nothing then he knew another one of his friends was going to be driven insane, and Jason refused to let that happen.

Jason decided not to even bother trying to be stealthy as soon as he reached the laser grid. He'd managed to stay out of sight of the security cameras so far by following Nico's directions, but the laser alarm grid was far beyond his means to avoid. He did take a few moments to look over it, but it was clear at a glance that getting to the other side without setting off the alarms was beyond his capabilities. It had taken Nico's son of Pluto powers to get him across, and Jason didn't have anything like that in his own arsenal of powers.

He tested the lasers with one hand to make sure they weren't the kind that could actually burn a person to death. An alarum started blaring the moment his hand went through the beam, but that was the only bad thing that happened.

So Jason broke into a run after that, ignoring the other security cameras and motion sensors that were set up. He kept running until he reached the elevator that Nico had told him about. The one that wouldn't work unless you could pass a retina scan.

He thought he'd been prepared for that, but he misunderstood what Nico had said about it. Jason had assumed he'd be able to get inside the elevator before facing the retina scan, but just wouldn't be able to take it down. Unfortunately, that was not the case. It seemed that he needed to pass the retina scan to even get the doors open.

Jason muttered a curse in Latin and tried to quickly think of a solution. Would it be possible to pry the doors open by hand?

He tried, grabbing one half from where the doors met in the center, and pulled it back toward the wall with all his might. It wobbled and started to give, but then slipped through his fingers. The same thing happened when he tried again, and the third time. Prying them open was possible, it seemed, but he couldn't get a good enough grip with just his fingertips.

"Come on," he muttered to himself. "Think, Jason, think!"

He spent nearly two minutes trying to pry the doors open by hand, but in that time no one came to try to stop him. It seemed that the fire drill was a double edged sword. It removed whatever reinforcements the Blue Ward had within their regular staff, keeping them off the grounds while the firefighters cleared the building, but it also kept anyone who might have access from coming to try to stop Jason. In other words, anyone who he could use to open the doors. He wouldn't even necessarily need to kill them. Using their life as leverage would probably be all he needed for their cooperation.

_Leverage!_

The inspiration came to Jason and he pulled out his coin, and tossed it in the air. Seconds later, he was holding his spear. He jammed the point into the space between the doors and wrenched it to one side. The spear worked like a lever, prying the doors far enough apart that Jason was able to get his hands in the space. He shoved them open the rest of the way and entered quickly, pulling his spear inside with him. The doors shut behind him, leaving him in relative darkness. It seemed that without the retina scan being completed, the elevator had not been powered on. Only the emergency lights lights were working.

"Of course, it's not going to be easy," he muttered. "Not one single part of it."

But that was okay. This was what Jason had been planning for. He hadn't counted on that struggle getting through the freaking doors, but he'd already had a plan for how to get to the lower levels without needing the elevator to work for him.

The maintenance hatch on the ceiling wasn't difficult to find. Jason used the butt of his spear to open it, then levered his spear through the opening so that it was lying flat across the elevator's roof. He used it like a pull up bar to get himself up onto the elevator's roof, then he replaced the hatch, to hopefully confuse anyone who came after him. Maybe if he was lucky they'd think he gave up and went home. Yeah right. But he could hope. Jason was feeling oddly optimistic as he climbed down the cables to the lower levels.

"I've always wanted to do this," he said to himself, smirking.

He got the doors to the lower level open the same way he'd gotten the elevator doors on the higher level open, then found himself in a long stone corridor. At the end there was a wall with a seam running through the center, like the doors of the elevators, and Jason got the feeling that was the one Nico had been talking about. The door he hadn't been able to get passed.

Jason scowled at it as he moved closer. He wondered if he'd be able to use his spear to pry this one open as well, but somehow didn't think so. It looked like it was made of some smooth stone, like onyx or obsidian, but when he reached it, he realized that wasn't actually the case. He could feel electricity running through currents inside of it. Maybe it would open if he tried blasting it?

He did try prying it open with his spear, just in case, but that didn't work. When his skin touched it he noticed that it lit up in places showing the circuitry underneath.

"Error," said an automated sounding voice. "Incomplete bio-signature."

Whatever that meant.

Jason had just decided to try blasting the door when he heard something that stopped him. A sizzling sound, like bacon in a frying pan, had reached his ears. Seconds later he heard . . . he heard what sounded like curses in an odd mixture of English, Italian, and some other language. Greek maybe? As he watched, a semi-circle pattern became visible on the door. Not lit up by the lights and circuits inside . . . it was actually destroying the lights and circuits inside, and becoming clearer and clearer!

"Stupid magic resistant doors! You are no match for my black blood!" came Nico's triumphant shout.

Then a half moon shaped chunk of the door went flying out, toward Jason. He had to jump aside quickly to keep it from landing on his toes, and from the looks of it, that would have really, really hurt.

Then Nico dove headfirst through the opening, and landed with sort of a somersault on the ground. He seemed to notice out the corner of his eye that he was not alone and spun toward Jason grinning. "Oh hi, Percy . . . er . . . not Percy."

* * *

AN: Does the end of this chapter give anyone a sense of déjà vu, lol? Well, at least Jason got out of it without taking an iron bar to the head, but probably only because Sadie wasn't in on the jail-break with Nico this time.

I have read Mark of Athena, btw. (a lot of people have been asking me that) I won't put any spoilers here, so no worries, but I liked it quite a lot. I especially liked the Team Leo part. That was hilarious. Even though it would have been simpler for him just to torch everyone opposing him there . . . though that's more like something the Façade kids would have done. Or the characters in Borderlands. I want to play that game so bad now, but I can tell just by watching clips from it on youtube that my parents will never let me play it in our house. Thankfully, I'll be in college next year, lol . . . and I just got an image in my head of Leo lighting everything around him up and screaming "Burn all the babies!" (A character in Borderlands shouted that, even though there didn't seem to be any babies involved. They were just blowing up a railroad track to rob a train)

It's going to be a long year, waiting for the next book, House of Hades to come out, but Rick Riordan's books are always worth the wait.


	13. Chapter 13

13

Finding Jason waiting outside the so called impenetrable doors to the Blue Ward was a bit of a surprise. Nico had been expecting it to be Percy storming the complex, coming to find him. Not the guy he just met like a week ago.

"So . . . what brings you here, Jason?" he asked. That was more to make conversation than because he hadn't already guessed.

"I could tell there was trouble afoot and figured you'd be at the center of it," said Jason. "You okay?"

Nico nodded. "Yep. Fine. Hey, I found out what those freaks are doing to demigods -Hey!"

Jason had seized Nico's chin and tilted his face back. His gaze was locked on Nico's eyes. "What happened? What happened to your eyes?" he demanded. "Did they . . ."

Nico batted Jason away. "It's fine. That's part of my story, actually. The Sparknotes version is that they're deliberately driving demigods crazy by using laser eye surgery to remove something called melanin from our eyes and turning them blue. My eyes were exposed to the lasers for a few seconds, but not long enough to cause any lasting damage. I might have lost a little melanin, but it should grow back."

_I hope,_ he added silently. He hadn't considered that there might have been some color change to his eyes, but Jason was looking at him in a very disturbed way.

Then the older boy pulled a small flask from his belt and uncapped it. "Tilt your head back and try to keep your eyes open."

Nico obeyed. He hadn't thought of using nectar as eye-drops, but now that he did, it didn't seem to be a bad idea. But what Jason poured into his eyes wasn't nectar. "What is that?"

"Unicorn draught. Excellent for curing wounds . . . and it seems to be working. Your eyes are black as coffee again."

"As black as my soul," Nico clarified with a smirk. "Thanks."

"No prob. So, you ready to get out of here now, or was there anything you still needed from there?" Jason was clearly ready to help him either way. And though Nico's plan before had been escape, having Jason there as backup now made him reconsider.

If it was Percy, Percy would be dragging him away already by now. But Jason was almost as strong as Percy. Maybe just as strong. And he was willing to storm into the Blue Ward since they were already down there. Maybe they could find an answer for why the demigods working in the Blue Ward were going along with this after all.

_This is risky,_ warned Anubis.

_This is half of the reason why I came here, remember?_ Nico reminded him. _Figuring out the method for their madness was only part of the reason. If we don't figure out why they're doing it, we can't know that we've really stopped it, or keep it from happening again._

That was what Percy had done at the end of the Titan War. That was what Nico was going to do now. And if he and Jason got in trouble, well, Percy was on his way to back them up. Possibly with other demigods, but Nico hoped by himself. He wanted to limit Jason's contact with other Greek demigods as much as possible until he sorted out the situation between the Grace siblings.

_I can still wind this mission up tonight,_ Nico told Anubis. _I can just do a more thorough job if Jason and I go back in and spend another ten minutes trying to get answers._

Anubis was quiet for a few moments while considering this, then telepathically nodded. _Do what you think best then._

"There's one thing I didn't find out for you," Nico told Jason. "And that's why the people here want to do this to demigods. They were using their laser eye surgery thing to break the gods' connection with their children. Our eyes seem to hold what connects us to our parents' power. But some of the people working there are demigods themselves. I never got the chance to ask any of them why they were doing this."

"So you want to try since we're here?" asked Jason.

"If you're cool with trying to find out."

"I am. Anything I need to know before we go in?"

"Oh yeah," Nico told him. "They have this power dampener thing. I don't know exactly what it is, but it nullifies all our demigod powers. You can temporarily shut it off by setting off the sprinkler system, but it doesn't stay off too long. It came back on twice before I made it to the doors, and is probably back on now."

Jason looked both worried and interested. "Something like that seems pretty dangerous. I'd like to take a look at it if we get a chance. Possibly destroy it too."

"I cast my vote for destroying it. That thing's a huge pain."

"Alright. Let's hurry," said Jason. "I'm not sure what will happen if we stay here too long."

"Hurricane Percy, probably," muttered Nico.

"What?"

"Huh? Oh, nothing." He took a few steps away from the hold he'd burned out of the door and then got a running start, to make it easier to dive through it. Jason followed less gracefully, not bothering with any aerial stunts. The hole wasn't very bit, and Jason had pretty broad shoulders, so he had to struggle a little bit to get through. Nico held out his hands to help him. Jason gratefully took them and let Nico pull him through.

"You called me Percy when you first saw me," commented Jason, clearly not ready to let the subject drop. "Then you just mentioned him again. Are you expecting him to come by?"

"Yeah," admitted Nico. "He's my cousin . . . and best friend."

"House of Life?" asked Jason.

"No. Demigod."

"Oh." Jason had been carrying a spear, but he tossed it into the air suddenly, and it became a coin. Then he tossed it again and a sword appeared in his hand. "And he's your cousin? So who's his mother?"

"A very nice human woman," said Nico. He didn't want to blatantly lie to Jason, but wasn't going to start giving out information about Percy's mortal family. "His father is Po – Neptune."

Was it just his imagination or did Jason blanch a bit at that?

"So . . . he's got like earthquake powers and stuff?"

_Huh._ Nico had never actually seen Percy cause an earthquake. He knew he'd caused a volcanic eruption. Maybe that counted? "He's pretty powerful," he said and decided to leave it at that.

Jason might have asked more questions, but the power dampener chose that moment to come back on. Nico was kind of used to the feeling of pseudo-fatigue it brought on, having felt it drain away his powers four other times already just that day, but Jason clearly hadn't been expecting it. He stumbled and almost fell. Nico had to grab him so he wouldn't.

"Damn," muttered Jason. "I wasn't expecting that."

"Yeah, it sucks," said Nico. He let go of him since Jason seemed capable of standing on his own and pointed two fingers at the closest sprinkler. Hieroglyphics blazed around him as he let his fire spell go off. The dampener instantly went off again.

He'd hoped that Jason would have missed seeing what he did, or at least the hieroglyphics part, but could tell at a glance that wasn't the case.

"So . . . your dad was Pluto and your mom was House of Life?" guessed Jason, obviously trying to make sense of Nico.

"Something like that." And by that Nico meant, 'Not at all like that,' but letting Jason in on the big secret wouldn't be prudent. Annabeth didn't even know yet, and unlike most people, Nico trusted her. The less people that knew he was doing the impossible by hosting Anubis, the better.

Jason laughed. "So their dampener only works on your demigod powers, not your House of Life magic? Ha, these poor fools weren't prepared for you at all."

"Nope." _You have no idea._

The two demigods quickly made their way down the hall. Nico pointed out the creepy eye room, where he'd blown up the eye laser machine earlier that evening. It still smelled strongly of smoke and had odd burn patterns all around it, thanks to the fireworks. Then he pointed out the office that he'd gotten notes from earlier, and that he'd stopped in again before proceeding to the exit and burning a chunk out of the doors. He'd taken forty seconds to empty the drawers of the file cases into his Duat locker. He'd stolen their computers' hard drives and all the disks too. All their data now belonged to Nico, but as far as he knew it was all sciency stuff. He hadn't been able to find anything that seemed like a manifesto for why these Blue Ward people were being such jerks to fellow demigods when he was going through the stuff earlier.

They also passed some of the people who worked in the ward that Nico had knocked unconscious. As a last resort, he could always grab one of them before shadow traveling him and Jason out of there, and they could pump them for information, but Nico could tell Jason was interested in the dampener. Honestly, Nico was too. Interested in blowing it up.

"Are there other demigods being held down here?" asked Jason.

"Uh, yeah . . ." Nico tried not to cringe at the memory. "They um . . . I checked on them on my way to the door. They . . . they're not so good. We're not going to be able to get them out of here, Jason."

"What do you mean?"

They'd reached the spot where the corridor split in two directions. One was where Nico knew they were keeping the other demigods they'd done their eye laser thing to. Nico didn't know what lay in the other direction, but if he had to make a guess where the power dampener was, that it was down that way.

"On my way out, I blasted open all the doors to the other demigods' rooms," Nico told Jason, and quickly led him to the first room on the hallway.

There were two demigod occupants to that room. One was strapped down to the bed, like Nico's roommate had been, just lying there like he was catatonic. The other was sitting in the corner, giggling and babbling. When they drew closer, they could hear just how disturbing what he was rambling about was.

" . . . feel my teeth sink into their flesh. Crunch, crunch, crunch, snap, like a ripe apple. Feel the blood run down my chin, down my shirt stain my clothes, and I'm going to get in trouble, I'll have been a bad boy, but I don't care. Must eat, taste it, taste it, taste it, don't cook it. Cooking ruins it. Raw is the way. Bite their face off and gnaw on their skull . . ."

"They're all like that," Nico told Jason, watching as Jason's face changed its expression from pity to horror. "I busted every single door open. There's not one of them sane enough to leave their room or I would have brought them to the exit. But the way they are now . . ."

"They're a danger to themselves and to the people around them," agreed Jason. "I'll make sure Camp Jupiter sends an extraction team for them."

_Not if Camp Half-Blood does first,_ thought Nico, but didn't voice that thought. It wasn't really a contest. As long as these demigods got help, it didn't matter who gave it to them.

Nico and Jason both turned away from the mad demigod in the corner at the same time, without needing words to know it was time to go. Nico liked how they both seemed to be on the same page like that.

Jason followed Nico as he led them down the other corridor. The dampener came back on. This time Jason only stumbled a little bit, but wasn't in any danger of falling. Nico quickly turned the dampener back off by burning the sprinkler system again. He wondered how long he'd be able to exploit that trick. Hopefully, unprogramming that emergency feature would be too complicated for anyone at the complex to manage.

"So," said Nico as they made their way back to the other hall, the one he hadn't been down yet. "How did you get past that elevator? And which alarm did you set off?"

"That stupid laser grid alarm," Jason told him. "I got past every camera and motion sensor thanks to your notes until I got there, but I had no way to get across without setting it off."

"And the elevator?"

"I pried the doors open with my lance, climbed through the maintenance hatch, then slid down the cables."

"Cool," said Nico.

"I know," said Jason. "I've always wanted to do secret agenty stuff like that."

"You could be like that one guy in that one movie," said Nico.

"You mean like Tristan McLean when he played that Israeli spy?" asked Jason.

"Actually I was thinking more along the lines of Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity. You know, the movie where he plays a super secret agent named _Jason_ with no memory?"

Jason didn't look pleased. "I'd rather be like Tristan McLean than Matt Dam- ah!"  
Nico hadn't been paying attention as well as he should have been. It was way too easy to feel complacent around Jason, just like it was with Percy. There wasn't much that could stand up against two children of the Big Three, since somehow, their sons seemed to get along so much better than they did. Nico could easily see himself and Jason becoming good friends . . . but that was still no excuse for him and Jason nearly being blind sided by a longsword wielding demigod in a lab coat.

Nico raised his sword and prepared to disarm the enemy, but Jason . . . did . . . something with electricity. There was a hum, and a pop, and a flash of light, then the lab coat demigod was on the floor unconscious.

"Oops," said Jason.

Nico shrugged. "We'll just question the next one."

"Sorry, dude. He caught me by surprise," said Jason, looking a bit embarrassed.

"No, it's cool," Nico assured him.

But after that they made a point to stay more on guard, but they didn't run into anymore enemies in the hallway. The corridor ended on another set of doors like the ones at the Blue Ward's entrance.

"Should I try blasting them?" asked Jason. "Or do you want to do . . . whatever it is you did to the others?"

"I got this," answered Nico. He'd cut one fingertip to burn a hole out of the last set of doors. That cut had stopped bleeding awhile back, but he sliced it open again and traced another, larger, half moon on these doors with his black blood.

"What is that?" asked Jason. "Is that . . . is that your blood?"

"Yeah," said Nico. "Never touch it. It's like necrotic acid. It just burns through stone and glass, and stuff, but it will rot your flesh on contact."

Jason nodded, but didn't look disgusted. Nico was surprised how glad that made him. He got the feeling that he and Jason were going to end up being good friends . . . if they didn't end up killing each other because of the Greek-Roman rivalry thing.

The first layer of blood that he applied to the door burnt about halfway through and left a nice indentation several inches deep. Nico traced that shape again, and waited for his blood to burn the rest of the way through. The dampener turned on once more while they were waiting, so Nico shut it off again. He noticed Jason unhook a black canister from his belt and raised an eyebrow in question.

"Vulcan flashbang," explained Jason. "I'll toss it in before you go diving through. It should disorientate anyone or anything in there enough to keep them from attacking us for at least ten seconds."

"So it's like a stun grenade?" asked Nico.

"Just like a stun grenade."

Nico was liking Jason better and better. The kid had some seriously cool toys.

"The door's almost open. You ready?"

Jason nodded. Nico put a hand against the door and waited until he heard the fizzling sound of his blood burning through stone and circuitry stop. Then he nodded to Jason and gave the door a shove. The piece he'd burned free from the rest slid inward and crashed to the floor. Then Jason hit a button on the flashbang and tossed it through the hole.

Nico closed his eyes as a precaution, and it was a good thing he did. Even with his eyes closed he could still see the light's brilliance. The moment it faded, he dove through. Jason followed right behind him. The bigger teen had an easier time getting through this door, since Nico had deliberately made the opening larger for him.

But still, by the time he made it through, Nico had already sized up the situation. The walls of the room they were in were covered completely with Celestial bronze, the same way that the tech room in the Big House was . . . Except here the walls were clearly hooked to some sort of machine, with all sorts of pipes and wires. The machine itself, which Nico assumed was the dampener, looked like something that would be found in an evil genius's lab, with Tesla coils spiraling out of it, and a big crystal-ball thingie full of light in the center. He wondered what would happen if he smashed it . . . but couldn't spend too much time wondering.

Because Landin was in the room, armed with a pistol and struggling to recover from the effects of the stun grenade. Nico leapt across the room, knocked the gun from his hand, and held his sword so the tip was hovering just in front of the hollow of his throat.

"Hey, Dean Landin," said Nico, "I know I should have some witty line to insert here, but I don't. So we're just going to skip ahead to the interrogation."

"Tristan McLean would have had a witty quote to say," commented Jason.

"Yeah, I know," bemoaned Nico. "Hey, do _you_ have a witty line I could use?"

"What? No, you have to come up with your own banter," said Jason. "It's the rules!"

Landin coughed, and rubbed his eyes, and nearly impaled himself on Nico's sword as he struggled to recover from the effects of the flashbang. "You . . . little delinquent."

"Hmm, I see you need to work on your witty banter too," said Nico, "but sadly we don't have time tonight. Tight schedule, you know? Egyptian apocalypse in progress, crazy cousin en route, and a civil war on the horizon. So yeah, no time for you to practice your villain speak. Now, on to the interrogation!"

* * *

AN: Sorry for all the random geekery. I've been rereading too many scenes where Andre and Eden incorporate their penchant for geeking out into their missions and fights, and had to try it out myself. It worked well with my headcannon of Jason being a Tristan McLean fan, and Nico liking the fantasy and adventure genre in general.

But speaking of geekery, I posted two humorous minifics last week that you might like if you enjoyed Nico's and Jason's banter. One, entitled: 'Percy Jackson IS Aquaman,' is about what happens when Nico gets enough leverage over Percy and Thalia to pick their Halloween costumes. The other, 'Fullmetal Leo' doesn't actually have anything to do with the Fullmetal Alchemist series, but is called that because Leo, like Edward Elric, has a robotic arm in the minific . . . because he decided the flesh and blood arm he was born with wasn't cutting it anymore, so he hacked it off and replaced it with a robotic limb that can shoot lasers. But Piper and Jason don't approve. Or maybe they're just jealous.

Next chappie will be up as soon as I can get it written, probably sometime next week. There're actually only a few chapters left in this fic, but I know how the next one in the series starts, so I'll be beginning that one only a week or two after this one's finished.


	14. Chapter 14

14

"First question," said Nico. "What is melanin?"

Landin looked at him oddly. "A pigment."

"Excuse me?" asked Nico. He glanced at Jason to see what Jason made of this.

Jason punched Landin in the stomach. "May I remind you, Landin, that you're now a prisoner of war. You will answer our questions or suffer the consequences."

Landin doubled over. "I did answer your question!"

"You called me a pig!" said Nico indignantly.

"I said pigment! It's a chemical that causes coloration!"

"Oh. Well why didn't you say so?" asked Nico.

"You would have saved yourself a punch in the stomach," added Jason.

Landin glowered at them. "It seems you really weren't completely truthful with me, Mr. di Angelo."

"Detective," corrected Nico.

"What?" Landin seemed confused.

"Detective di Angelo," said Nico. "I've decided that I want to be a detective when I grow up. Seems like your school did give me a bit of life guidance after all, but don't think that will get you a pass. You have to answer for what you've done here."

"Most definitely," agreed Jason. "Next question: what were you hoping to accomplish? Why have you been torturing demigods and driving them mad?"

"I wasn't trying to torture them," said Landin. "I was trying to free them."

"Then why are they in cells?" demanded Nico.

"An unfortunate side effect of the procedure we've been developing to free all demigods from our fate," said Landin.

"What fate are you trying to save us from?" asked Jason angrily.

"The fate of forever being a slave to your godly parent's will!" said Landin. "The fate of being a pawn in their big game, to be broken, or cast aside the moment you're no longer interesting or useful enough, and knowing that when they're done with you, you'll have helped them move the world one step closer to its destruction at their hands. Because the games they play are cruel and senseless. Take a look at the world, boys! You think it just got that way because of the senselessness of humans? No! It's the gods' fault!

"Every war since the dawn of Greek civilization was ultimately their fault! Every civil war fought since then has been because they sprouted new personalities and allowed themselves to be known by different names, and gave birth to demigods who were uniquely Roman rather than Greek, then set their two groups of children to fighting with one another over every petty slight or grudge imaginable!"

"Wait, what?" Jason looked shocked. "What do you mean . . . two groups of demigods? Is that really true?"

"It is," admitted Nico. This wasn't how he would have preferred to let Jason know, but trying to hide it anymore was too risky with Landin blabbing his big fat mouth.

"I'm sorry. I should have told you the truth earlier, Jason."

Jason looked surprised, but also a little bit like something he'd suspected had just been confirmed. "You're Greek?"

Nico nodded. "I'm the son of Hades. Not Pluto."

Jason stared at him, then finally nodded. For a second he looked a little bit scared, then started to ask. "At your camp is there anyone . . . I mean, I assume you guys have your own camp . . . but is there anyone there named -"

"Thalia Grace?"

"You know her?" Jason's voice cracked.

"Yes. And I swear to you, after we got this mess with these idiots sorted out, I was going to tell you and her both," said Nico. "I swear it on the Styx."

"She's alive?" asked Jason, like he couldn't believe it.

"Alive and well," Nico told him. "I'll take you to meet her as soon as we're done here."

Jason nodded and seemed to try to pull himself together. "Right. We've got a job to do."

"You think it's going to be that easy?" asked Landin. "Whenever Greek and Roman demigods meet, they fight and kill one another. I guarentee you the minute you leave this compound, one of you will stab the other in the back."

"I guarantee you're wrong," said Jason.

"We've already eaten at McDonalds together plenty of times without shedding any blood," added Nico.

"But now that you know -"

"I already knew before," said Nico.

"And I suspected," said Jason. "A little. Okay, a very, very little, but that doesn't matter. We're cousins. My dad's Jupiter."

"Ha!" laughed Landin. "You're sons of the Big Three! That would be the Elder Three, to you, Roman boy. You're slaves to your fathers' natures. Their rivalry is yours -"

"Actually, my best friend is the son of Poseidon," said Nico, "and there is no rivalry between us. Oh, but fair warning, he kind of saw what was happening in the optics room and he's on his way here for your blood. Just saying."

Jason snickered.

Landin seemed tongue tied for a moment as his arguments were being torn apart. "No matter! You may be able to resist now, but it is in your nature. As you grow older you'll have no choice but to bow to the will your godly parent has forced on you."

"Wrong again," Nico told him. "I was born in the 1930's. I'm like twice as old as you, and I'm not a slave to my father's will. I've argued with him . . . defied him . . . and I was the one who convinced him to march his undead armies to defend Olympus during the Battle of Manhattan."

"You're eighty years old?" asked Jason.

"It's a long story," said Nico. "I'll explain later."

"That should be good," laughed Jason. "Alright, Landin, got any more arguments for us to dissect?"

"You may be amongst the rare demigods capable of resisting their parents' curse, but for every one of us who can resist, there are a hundred who cannot," said Landin. "Why do you think the world is in such a sorry state now? It's because of the gods."

"I don't get how driving every demigod you can get your hands on completely insane is going to help anything," said Nico.

"If anything, wouldn't that make things worse?" asked Jason.

"Yeah," agreed Nico. "If you're blaming the state of the world on us and our parents and the things we did when we were sane, what do you think is going to happen when we're all completely crazy and our parents are all pissed at you for it?"

"That is what the procedure is for," Landin told him.

"Making us completely crazy?"

"Putting a stop to the gods' influence over the world. And demigods' influence too."

"What do you mean?" asked Jason sharply.

"The procedure can do it," said Landin. "Sever a demigod's ties to their parent."

Nico and Jason both stared at him in silence for a moment. Jason seemed stunned, but Nico was merely grim. The theory he'd come up with had turned out to be right.

"I don't believe you," said Jason finally.

"I saw his notes," Nico said. "And I had a hunch. I think he's telling the truth."

"But . . . but . . ."

"Yeah, I know."

The idea that someone could take away their powers permanently was a scary one. Nico didn't like it anymore than Jason did.

"What I don't know though," said Nico, "is why they'd want to do that? And don't feed me that BS about trying to spare us from our fate. No one goes to this much trouble just for humanitarian efforts."

"You're sharper than I gave you credit for, Mr. di Angelo -"

"Detective," corrected Nico again.

Landin sneered at him. "The why though is quite simple. Demigods are the main source of the gods' power here on earth. They don't even have to be the children of that god, so long as they worship them on occasion. If we can sever all their links to their main power source, then their control over the natural world order diminishes and we can take back our world! Make it in our own image! By breaking the children of the gods we break the gods themselves!"

Nico and Jason both punched Landin at the exact same moment. Nico slugged him in the face. Jason punched him in the stomach again. Landin made a very interesting noise that sounded kind of like a duck being run over.

"I don't know about you," said Nico, "but I've heard enough."

"Same," said Jason. "Let's secure this prisoner and withdraw."

Nico opened his Duat locker and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. "You have the right to remain silent," he told Landin as he cuffed his hands behind his back as tight as the handcuffs would allow. "Anything you say will probably result in us hitting you again. You have the right to an attorney . . . or something. I don't know the rest of it, but it doesn't really matter. You're kind of screwed no matter what happens in a trial up here, because when you die you'll just end up getting another trial, and I guarantee you that what you've done here has earned you a spot in the Fields of Punishment."

"We need to do something about the dampener," said Jason. He pointed toward the weird looking machine in the corner. "Assuming that is the dampener. Should I blast it?"

"I wouldn't," said Nico. "It might explode."

"You're right. I guess I'll look for an off switch then. I don't suppose you want to tell me which button it is, Landin?"

Landin snorted.

"Is there a plug connecting it to the wall?" asked Nico. "If you kill its power supply . . ."

"That should shut it off," finished Jason. "Good thinking." He looked behind the machine and found the plug. But as he started to reach for it, Nico saw a sly smile cross Landin's face.

"Wait!" he said, realizing that this wasn't a good idea, and that somehow the plug had to be booby-trapped, but Jason had already grabbed it.

Electricity crackled over Jason's body, freezing him in place. A pained expression twisted his face.

"Oh. I must have forgotten to tell you," said Landin. "Our power dampener is specifically designed to draw energy from any available source that it comes in contact with. I wonder how many watts a son of Jupiter can crank out before -"

Nico spared only one second to punch him in the jaw to shut him up, then ran toward Jason. He knew what he was about to do was stupid. He knew that electricity could be dangerous to humans as well as demigods, and especially children of Hades/Pluto and Poseidon/Neptune because Zeus was a jerk and would stick it to them any way he could. But he also knew that whatever was happening to Jason wasn't good at all, and didn't want to find out how long Jason could stand getting his power sucked directly out of him like that.

So he drew his sword and cleaved through the power cord, and prayed to his father that his sword would absorb rather than conduct whatever power there was, or else he was going to get electrocuted.

An ominous buzzing sound replaced the crackling of electricity as Jason was freed, but Nico didn't have time to feel either relief or worry.

Something popped. No, exploded. Nico just hadn't been able to tell at first, standing at point blank range. And something also . . . shattered. He felt the force of the explosion lift him off his feet and send him crashing into Jason, even as multiple tiny shards dug painfully into his skin. Those shards were agony. The pain they caused went beyond normal physical pain. Nico could feel a pulling at his very life energy, and wondered if this was how every monster he'd ever slayed with his Stygian iron blade had felt when his sword had drained their souls.

He and Jason hit the floor, with Jason cushioning his landing, but even if the relatively older boy hadn't been there, Nico probably wouldn't have felt a thing. The pain of the crash would have been nothing compared to the agony those shards were causing. He tried to scream, but couldn't tell if he actually managed to or not. All sound was growing dim, and Nico wondered if he was dying, except . . . his chest had grown warm, where his heart was supposed to be . . . where that stone scarab was now. And it felt like . . . it felt like there was some kind of magnetic force there, pulling back the pieces of his soul that he'd lost to the shards. Suddenly Nico felt very sleepy. Keeping his eyes open was way too much trouble. It would surely be okay to close them, just for a few seconds.

Little did he know that would be the last time he opened them himself for a very long time.

* * *

Jason rolled Nico off him and tried not to scream out in pain. His face, it felt like it was on fire. And his arm. Gods, his arm hurt like someone had stabbed it with a power drill and turned it on. When he looked at it he saw why. Kind of.

There were two shards of the glowing crystal-ball thing that had been part of the machine. It must have shattered when Nico slashed the machine with his sword. Cutting the power cord must have caused some kind of reaction that blew it up.

The shards were pulsating with light. Jason would almost swear he could see them sucking out his life energy. He wasted no time in yanking them out, and when he did the pain dulled down to the standard amount of pain that was usually caused by getting glass shards embedded in your arm. Jason quickly pulled the piece out of his face.

Only then did he become aware of the face that someone was screaming bloody murder. Landin, it turned out. And from only one shard of the glowing glass that had flown across the room and embedded itself in his cheek. One shard and he was screaming like that. He really could have used legion training to cure him of that wussiness. Nico had to have gotten hit with more shards than Landin had, and Jason didn't hear him squealing like a stuck pig.

He turned to ask his new friend if he was okay, then froze in horror. Nico had gotten it a lot worse than Jason. He'd shielded Jason from the blast, or else Jason would have ended up with a whole lot more shards than he had, but Nico had taken the brunt of the attack. Dozens of shards were embedded into his face, throat, and hands. His shirt and jacket seemed to have protected his chest, but what he'd gotten was bad enough. Blood was running down his skin in thick dark streams. Jason started to reach for him, to try to help, but remembered Nico's warning about touching his blood at the very last second.

But he still couldn't just leave those shards stuck in his friend. Not when he knew what kind of agony they caused, and when he didn't know what kind of lasting damage they caused. He thought frantically, trying to figure out a way to get the shards out of Nico without touching his blood. He didn't have any tweezers or anything . . . He was about to tear apart his own shirt and use that to cover his hands, and hope that it would hold up long enough, when he saw that it wouldn't be necessary.

Nico hadn't been kidding when he said his blood burned through glass. It seemed to have dissolved whatever bits of the shards were inside his skin. The pieces that had been outside started falling away from the cuts, mixing into the streams of his blood and dissolving themselves, like sugar cubes in warm water.

Jason quickly pulled out his flask of unicorn draught and dripped it over Nico's cuts. He didn't have enough to use it as liberally as he would have liked to, but there was still enough to do the trick. He smiled as Nico's cuts healed, turning into pink scars that stood out against his pale skin, but would vanish with another dose of unicorn draught.

He glanced at Landin to check and make sure the prisoner hadn't managed to escape, but Landin was still screaming his head off. So then he did a quick check around the room for something to help him clean Nico up. A mostly full bottle of water sat on the desk. Jason grabbed that and splashed it over Nico's face, throat, and hands to wash away the trails his black blood had left.

Even diluted, it seemed that his black blood was still pretty dangerous. It burned grooves into the floor, so Jason kept his distance until he was pretty sure it was safe.

He'd expected the water to wake Nico up, but the boy remained still.

"Nico?" he asked, and reached out to shake Nico by the shoulder. Nico's head kind of flopped to the side a bit but he didn't stir at all. "Nico? Nico, wake up."

Nothing. No fluttering of the eyelids, no movement at all . . . not even near his chest. It was then that Jason realized Nico wasn't breathing.

Jason forced his hands to remain steady as he pressed two fingers against Nico's throat, checking for a pulse. It was hard to quiet the thundering of his own heartbeat that was pounding away at his temples, to make sure he didn't mistake his own pulse for Nico's. But Nico was frighteningly cold to the touch, and Jason couldn't feel his heartbeat.

Not completely trusting his own evaluation, he grabbed Nico's wrist and tried to find a pulse there, but again, there was nothing.

"No, no, no," he growled, and grabbed the front of Nico's shirt. He tore it open, to make it easier to give the younger boy chest compressions, but as he reached to position his hands directly over Nico's heart, he froze. Because embedded in Nico's chest, right overtop of his heart, was a black stone scarab, and Jason could clearly see that it wasn't just stuck to his skin. The thing was actually a part of him. A very thin, translucent layer of skin had actually grown over the edges of it, and a spider web of black veins radiated outward around it. "What the . . ."

Jason wasn't sure what to do. He'd been planning on trying to restart Nico's heart, but now he wasn't sure if Nico even had one. Or if the scarab thing was some sort of magical replacement for it. Or if he ever even had a pulse to begin with. All Jason knew was that he didn't want to lose anyone else on this assignment, even if Nico hadn't officially been working for him.

He tried to steel himself and focus and think like a commander, and a warrior. This wasn't the first time he'd knelt over a dying or dead friend, and fate wasn't kind enough for him to think it would be the last time either, but it never, ever got any easier.

"Nico?" he asked, because the stone scarab in place of his heart meant that the usual rules for having a pulse might not apply. "Can you hear me? Nico?"

Nico gave no indication that he'd heard Jason, or that he was conscious.

"I was going to give you CPR, but I'm not sure if it will work, considering you might have a stone heart," said Jason. "I'm going to try anyway, because I don't know what else to do. If this is the wrong thing, I'm sorry. And if this doesn't work . . . I'm sorry."

He could almost see Nico scowling at him, reminding him that he was doing what he wanted to do, and not doing any favors for Jason, except maybe telling him what he learned inside the complex, but that didn't make Jason feel like it was any less his fault. He should have tried harder to keep tabs on the kid. But it was too late now, and stewing over it wasn't going to help him.

Jason positioned his hands over the stone scarab, and prepared to start chest compressions, but the sound of rushed footsteps reached his ears. He tensed and was about to reach for his sword, but another teen was already rushing into the room. Another demigod, Jason realized with relief, and one who wasn't one of the poor, broken half-bloods that the complex had been torturing. That much was apparent at just a glance.

This new demigod wore a few pieces of old fashioned armor over an orange T-shirt, and carried a bronze sword, that he clearly knew how to use. His wrists were thick with muscle and he had the graceful, balanced step that only a trained warrior could manage. Several pieces of tousled dark hair fell into, but did nothing to obscure a pair of furious sea green eyes that zeroed in on Jason with deadly intent.

_"Get away from my cousin!"_

* * *

AN: Happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate it. I for one am enjoying the short break from school, even though all my teachers felt the need to cram on the work these past two weeks to make up for us getting three measly days off. But now I'm chilling at my Grandma's house. With my laptop. And tomorrow I am going to eat lots and lots of pumpkin pie. So it balances out in the end.

The next chapter is going to be the last chapter for this fic, but I'll be starting on the next fic in this AU immediately after I finish it.


	15. Chapter 15

15

_"Get away from my cousin!"_

Jason held up his hands to show he didn't mean any harm, but didn't scoot away from Nico. "Hey, hey," he said hastily when the other demigod got a look in his eyes that Jason suspected meant he was about to spring, "I'm not going to hurt him. You and I aren't enemies."

"I don't care, get away from him now!"

Jason really didn't want to, but he could tell that nothing he said was going to make a difference right now. So he backed off a few steps. "He's hurt," he told the other demigod, as he advanced once Jason backed off. "I couldn't find a pulse and he's not breathing. That machine did something to him when it exploded."

The other demigod, who Jason was pretty sure was Percy, knelt down beside Nico to check for himself. "Damn it . . ."

"I was about to give him CPR," said Jason, "but I don't know if it will work with that . . . thing on his chest."

"I don't know either," growled Percy. "Just . . . you just stay back."

"I'm not your enemy," Jason told him again. "I busted in here to rescue Nico too. You, you're Percy right? Hurricane Percy?"

"_What?" _demanded Percy. "What did you just call me?"

Jason winced. "Actually, Nico called you that. I thought it might be a nickname, or a title."

That must have sounded like something Nico would say, because a little bit of the suspicion in Percy's eyes went away and he started giving Nico chest compressions. "How long has he been like this?"

"Less than a minute. I can help -"

"You can stay back," snapped Percy, before giving Nico two rescue breaths. "What in Hades is that guy over there screaming about?" he asked once he switched back to chest compressions.

"He got hit by the power dampener's blast when it blew up too," explained Jason. "Nico got the worst of it. He shielded me."

A little bit of surprise crossed Percy's face but he didn't comment on what it was he found unusual. Jason couldn't help but wonder, even though he didn't want to distract Percy by asking. Was it unusual for Nico to prioritize others over his own safety? That wasn't in line with what Jason knew about him, not that he knew all that much. Nico had infiltrated the school of his own volition. Risked his own safety for all those other demigods. As much as Jason would have liked to think that maybe Nico had acted out of character and shielded Jason because they were cousins, he didn't think it was true. No, Nico was a natural born hero if Jason had ever known one, and Jason knew that he could have been anyone and Nico would still have shielded him.

He watched in silence as Percy continued trying to revive Nico, growing more and more desperate as one minute turned into two.

"Please," he tried again, "let me help."

Percy's green eyes boiled with suspicion.

"I can't possibly make things any worse," said Jason.

Finally, Percy nodded and Jason hurried over and took over giving chest compressions.

Two minutes turned into three. Then four.

"Nico, Nico, come on!" Percy began growing even more desperate. "Wake up, you little hellion! Wake up!"

"Percy -"

"No, it's not too late! Don't even suggest it!"

"There's one more thing I can try," said Jason, "but you'll want to stand back."

"Why? What are you going to do?"

"Give him a jolt," said Jason, then clarified. "Of electricity. See if I can jumpstart his heart . . . stone . . . thing."

Percy only hesitated a second, then nodded and moved back. "So, your sword is electric? That's -"

Jason pressed one hand over Nico's heart scarab and summoned a bolt of lightning. There was a thunderclap and a flash of light. Nico's body jerked as electricity ran through all his nerves and muscles, then flopped back down and lay still. For a second, Jason thought it hadn't worked. His own frustration had just started to give way to burning despair, and he prepared to try again, but then Nico bolted upright and screamed.

Green hieroglyphics blazed all around him, and though Jason couldn't read them, he recognized some as depicting jackals, vultures, and coffins, right before an unseen force flung him backwards, all the way against the far wall. Nico's eyes burned green as he jerked his head around frantically, like he was panicking. Then all at once, he calmed, and the green lights around him died.

"Uh, sorry."

Percy was the first to recover. He picked himself up and hurried over to Nico, looking relieved enough to cry, which was kind of how Jason felt. He might not know Nico, or even Percy very well, but they were both sons of the Elder Three, which made them the closest thing to family that he had, until he got Thalia back. He would have hurried over as well, but didn't want Percy misinterpreting his movements as a threat.

"Are you okay?" asked Percy, grabbing onto Nico's shoulder, but Jason wasn't sure if it was to steady his cousin or himself.

"I . . . I . . . yes. I think I am," said Nico, but somehow he didn't look all that certain.

"Are you sure?" asked Jason, stopping a few feet away from the Greek demigods, to respect personal boundaries.

"Sure enough," said Nico. "I see you two have met."

"Not officially," said Jason. He turned to Percy and held out a hand. "Jason Grace."

"Percy Jackson," the son of Poseideon introduced himself. "Sorry about before."

"No worried. I know how the situation had to have looked."

Percy seemed a lot more friendly now that he wasn't staring at Jason like he wanted to drown him. Then his brow furrowed and he seemed to make some sort of connection. "Your last name is Grace? And you have lightning powers?"

"Yes," said Jason, "I think you know my sister -"

"Thalia's his sister," said Nico.

"Nico told me he knows her," said Jason, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.

"And he – I told him I would reintroduce them," said Nico. "It's a very long story -"

"But an important one, I think," said Percy. His expression had changed minutely. If Jason didn't know better, he'd think Percy looked almost suspicious. But no, it had to be that he'd just remembered their situation, because he hauled Landin off the floor and struck him in the head with the pommel of his sword, knocking him out. "Let's get out of here and then you guys can tell me all about it. Should we head out on foot? Or are you strong enough to shadow travel us?"

Nico looked a little apprehensive, but nodded and held out his hands. Percy grabbed one, then both boys looked at Jason expectingly. Nico very deliberately moved his hand closer to Jason, indicating that he wanted him to grab onto it, so Jason obeyed. "What -"

Before he could finish he was swamped by darkness. Bitter cold darkness, like he was drowning in an icy current that was rushing past him so fast. He was about to scream, but suddenly, the darkness was gone. Or at least, the cold darkness was gone. Regular, not-so-dark darkness took its place, colored slightly by city lights.

"Where are we?" asked Percy. There was something in his tone that Jason thought sounded dangerous and angry. Then he saw the signs and kind of understood why.

"Those signs are in Chinese," he said.

"Oops," said Nico. "Hang on."

Darkness welled up again before Jason had time to even react. Just as suddenly it cleared away, but this time the cold did not. He realized, with shock and horror, that he was neck deep in water. Even worse, a very familiar giant statue was lit up further out in the water. The Statue of Libery. They were in New York. Not a good place for three half bloods to be if they didn't want a whole bunch of fights with monsters. For three sons of the Elder Three it was even worse.

Percy took care of towing them all to shore. Jason could have swam on his own, but he quickly realized that it was faster just to let Percy take care of it. His sea god powers helped propel all three of them, well four if Landin was included, to the shore.

"We're near Brooklyn House," said Nico. "We can keep Landin prisoner there for awhile. The other magicians will be willing to watch him while we reintroduce Thalia and Jason, explain the whole Greek-Roman thing, and figure out how to avoid another civil war between you guys."

"Greek-Roman thing?" asked Percy.

"It's going to take awhile to explain," said Jason. "Maybe we should get Landin secured first?"

"I can wait for an explanation for that," said Percy, "but there's one thing I need to know right now."

"What's that?" asked Jason.

"Sorry, but I need to ask it to Nico alone," said Percy.

Jason nodded. "Sure. Alright. I'll just take Landin then? And go wait . . . over there?" He motioned vaguely down the street then hauled Landin up over one of his shoulders and headed in that direction.

"Thanks," said Percy. "And sorry about this. It's just . . . a personal matter."

"It's fine," assured Jason, even though he felt a little stung. But then, he had known Percy for like three minutes, and Nico for only a couple weeks. Trust took time, he knew, and he was sure he would be able to build it with them both eventually. Besides, the two of them were going to give him his sister back. He was willing to do a whole lot more for them than just give them a few minutes of privacy, if it meant he could see Thalia again.

* * *

Percy waited until he was sure Jason was out of earshot then turned toward his cousin.

"What is it, Percy?"

Percy glared at him. "Why don't you tell me, Anubis?"

Nico, no Anubis, blinked. "You . . . you can tell it's me?"

"Of course I can tell it's you," said Percy. "You and Nico don't form your words the same way, and you speak more formally. If I'm right, you've been the one in control since you woke up, which begs the question: why is Nico letting you?"

Worry shaded Nico's face. Anubis's worry. Percy had never liked the idea of the Egyptian god being able to take over his cousin at will, but had put up with it because he didn't really have a choice, and because Nico and Anubis had come to an agreement, where Nico was in charge of his own body, unless he deemed it necessary for Anubis to take control.

"I'm sorry, Percy," said Anubis, "but we have a problem."

"And that is?"

Anubis took a deep breath before answering. "Nico's not here."

Percy gaped at him. "What in Hades's name do you mean Nico's not here?"

"Don't invoke his father's name," pleaded Anubis. "It might attract his attention."

"What do you mean Nico's not here?!" demanded Percy. "Are you saying . . . is he . . ."

"I don't know," said Anubis. "He's just . . . he's not in my head anymore. Not in his head anymore. He's nowhere."

"Do you mean he's dead, and his body is just . . . Oh gods . . ."

"I don't think he's dead," said Anubis. "I don't know what happened to him, but . . . I just don't know what happened to him, but I'd know if he was dead. And he's not."

Percy took several deep breaths, trying to make sense of this. "So he's not dead. You're positive?" he asked finally.

"I'm positive," said Anubis.

"So if he's not dead that means, what? His soul is just missing?"

"Essentially."

"Ok . . . so all we need to do is get it back, right?"

Anubis gave a helpless looking shrug.

"If we find it, we can get it back into his body, right?" asked Percy. "You can do that, can't you?"

"I . . . yes. I'll find a way. If I can't figure it out on my own, we can ask Thoth for help," said Anubis. "In fact, asking him what he thinks of this might be a good place to start . . . even though he is currently besieged by a bunch of chaos demons in the Pyramid Arena."

"Right," muttered Percy. "I'd forgotten about the Egyptian apocalypse that was in progress. You guys are stretched thin, then?"

Anubis nodded. "But I don't think you have time to worry about that. You have to figure out a way to prevent a civil war from breaking out."

"Civil war?"

"Between the Greek and Roman demigods. Er . . . you don't know."

"Yeah, I get the feeling that I'm missing something," said Percy, "but you know what? Let's let it wait. I'm pretty sure we're going to need more help than just the god of hippies, for all these problems." He stared at Nico's face, and just felt really, really weird knowing Nico wasn't the one behind it now. He hoped that when he got his cousin back, he'd forgive him for what he was about to do. "I'm Iris messaging Annabeth and Thalia. I'm letting them know everything now. Jason too, if you and Thalia think he can be trusted. And we're going to figure this out together. We're stronger as a family."

* * *

To Be Continued In The Next Installment Of The Alliance AU: Children Of The Underworld

* * *

AN: The first chapter of Children of the Underworld will hopefully be ready in about two weeks. Also on the way is a Christmas fic, and the Percy Jackson/Façade crossover that I'm coauthoring with another writer on this site. I plan to do a freaking ton of writing over Christmas break, and cannot wait until it starts.

Thank you all for reading!


End file.
